INTRODUCTION

The extreme pressure of work prevents me from joining you, ladies — as I would have wished to — at this induction of the officers of the Muntinlupa-Las Piñas chapter of Zonta International.

Fortunately, my wife — the president for-life of the Ramos family — has graciously consented to bring you this message of congratulations and good wishes from all of us to president-elect Brenda Tanjutco and all your other officers for 1992-94.

I must also commend you all for the apparent effectiveness of the work you have been doing — in training in self-help the women of Sitio Salvacion in Tunasan, Muntinlupa.

I note that this effort won you the Zonta International award for service at the Dallas convention in 1990 — and I wish you more success in these two years you’re about to start under a new chapter administration.

As you know, I too am preoccupied with inaugurating a new government. And my chief concern is exactly the same as yours: to try and obtain for the least of our people the essential humanities of life.

We Filipinos must learn to regard poverty as a form of tyranny which oppresses so many of our people — a tyranny against we must declare the moral equivalent of war.

In your work of expanding the life-choices of your fellow women in Sitio Salvacion in Tunasan, Muntinlupa, you are doing revolutionary work.

By teaching women of poor families, the basic truths about credit, livelihood, literacy, nutrition and health, you are performing a beneficial, subversive function.

Too many of our people are still too passive about their poverty: they think it brought about by ill-fortune, by God’s will: as a punishment for sins or as a time of trials here on earth.

This we know is not so: for God made man in his own image. Surely He destined humankind for a better thing than the poverty that so many of our people endure.

You and I know that a good life is possible not just for a small minority of Filipinos but for the whole of the national community: a life that enables an individual to realize the full possibilities of his or her life.

And this is the message that you — and I — must bring our people.

We must awaken the masses of our people to what they can make of their lives.

Thus the work you are doing, in between your pursuit of your careers, is necessary work. It is vital work.

In fact, it is God’s own work; and, as you begin another biennium, I bring you our country’s grateful thanks; and

Wish you our Lord’ s special blessings.