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Mr. Darwin Dominguez, VP for Operations of the St. Augustine School of Nursing, officers of the school, proud parents of the graduating students, dear graduates, ladies and gentlemen, Good Afternoon. I wish to start by congatulating the officers and all personnel of the St. Augustine School of Nursing for being Asia's pioneer and largest school for professional caregiving and practical nursing, for being the number one nursing school cahin the country in 2004 and for the 2003 citation by the Philippine National Caregiver Association as the outstanding caregiving school for the year.
I am greatly honored to share in the festivity of this memorable occasion, perhaps the first most important milestone in your lives, for there will be more in the years to come. Graduation marks the start of your journey, your quest towards the greater meaning of your lives, towards the attainment of your dreams, towards touching the lives of your fellowmen, your country, and the world. Speaking at graduations is always special for me, as it vividly turns back the hands of the time to that moment when I was that you are now and wondering what the story of my life will be, even as what I had then was the only a firm resolve to make a difference, no matter how small or humble it may be.
My dear Graduates, in itself your chosen profession is already making a difference in the world and all you have to do is to the best caregiver, nursing aide, or practical nurse that you surely can be.
Let me cite to you a recent report of the Population Media Center (PMC). It quoted the information provided by US-based website Caregiver Jobs Clearinghouse, that 800,000 new caregivers will be needed in the US for the next seven years, with 100,000 positions currently available. Our Department of Health also said recently that 500,000 nurses will be needed in the USA for the next five years.
Government data puts the number of Filipino registered nurses working abroad at 30,000 - and rising. From January-August this year alone, 7,855 professional nurses left abroad, according to statistics given from the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA).
Caregivers who left the country in the first six months of the year, on the other hand, rose up to 86 percent. From the 465 leaving caregivers that POEA documented last year, as of July 2007, 3,388 caregivers had left for abroad. This further went up 3,798 last August. Yet POEA's statistics, especially of those going to Canada under Canada's Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP), can be under-recorded. Many young applicants do not go to the POEA since the recruitment agency they applied with in Canada takes care of their documentation requirements. Moreover, it was only last year when the POEA started documenting Filipino migrant workers leaving as caregivers.
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In the article of Mr. Tujan, "Health Professionals Migration and its Impact on the Philippines," which appeared in the June 2002 issue of the Asia Pacific Research Network Journal, estimated that there were about 104,000 Filipino caregivers overseas during that time. The article said that this phenomenon is partly due to the preference of health insurance companies for less expensive home care than hospitalization, particularly for the aging of developed contries. Various studies have shown that the population of these counties will continue its aging trend in the years and decades to come, resulting in an ever-rising demend for foreign caregivers, nurses, and other medical workers and professionals. This also reflective of and enhanced by the ever-widening scope of globalization as the world continues to become borderless.
The very famous Oprah Winfrey once said that there is no such thing as failure, that what other people call as failure is actually God's way of pointing us in a new direction. This was exemplified by her own life story. Sometimes God writers straight lines in crooked lines. If being in the medical field is your calling, honor it and love it. don't worry about how successful you will be or whether you will be able to land a job overseas and when that will be. Rather, focus and believe in how good you can be and should be, and when the first job comes, just be very good at it, be committed to it. Your mindset should be set towards excellence in all areas of your life. That being that situation, in most caes, success will take care of itself.
Even if if all professions are great in that they all serve the common good, yours is one of the greatest and most vital. You take care of lives, not only in the physical dimension, but equally important, in the mental and emotional dimensions, and perhaps also in the spiritual dimension. You should bask in and live the innate nobility of your profession and the opportunity given to you to make a difference in the lives of others.
You also have the opportunity to elevate your skills and knowledge through the ladderized education program of the government of which your alma mater is a participant. Options abound in what ever road you will traverse or in whatever choice you will make. Therefore, treat time as a very important resource that this especially abundant while you are young, but never to be wasted.
Let me end by reading to you poem I came across sometime in the past and which has been my one of my guilding mantra or motto:
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Be the Best of Whatever You Are
If you can't be a pine on the top of the hill
Be a scrub in the Valley-but be
The best little scrub by the side of the rill;
Be a bush if you can't be a tree
If you can't be a bush be a bit of the grass,
And some highway some happier make;
If you can't be a muskie then just be a bass -
But the liveliest bas in the lake!
We can't all be captains, we've got to be crew,
There's something for all of us here.
There's big work to do and there's lesser to do,
And task we must do is the near.
If you can't be highway than just be a trail,
If you can't be the sun be a star;
It isn't by size that you win or you fail-
Be the best of whatever you are!
My warm congratulations dear graduates! Congratulations to us parents who have tirelessly placed the welfare of our children before that of ours. Congratulations to the St. Augustine officers for always striving to be world-class in your educational standards.
Good Day, ladies and gentlemen.
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