We would like to have our people ready to get jobs even without the degree as long as they have the skills . They can just go back later and finish the degree.

In today’s rapidly changing job market, skills – not degrees – are becoming increasingly valuable to employers. The nature of work and careers is changing fast, and in the future, the right skills will be prized over academic qualifications alone 1.

For generations, we have spent the first third of our lives acquiring the college degrees we need to find jobs. These degrees are the stamps on our professional passports that paved the way for the remaining two-thirds of our journey. However, this implies that the nature of our work, along with the skills and knowledge required to execute it, remains unchanged for a lifetime – which is no longer true 1.

While our parents likely held one job for life, most of us have had several – and not just jobs but careers, too. Our children can expect to have many jobs and careers through their professional lives – perhaps even at the same time, with the maturing of the gig economy.

Clearly, the future of work will not be about college degrees; it will be about job skills.
Microcredentials are mini qualifications that can help individuals learn new skills, progress in their careers or change careers entirely. Also known as microdegrees or nanodegrees, they are often on-demand online courses that can be completed in your own time and provide certification upon completion. They are designed to be fast, accessible and specialized.

Microcredentials are mainly offered by universities, business schools, colleges and further education centers. These shorter courses are often listed along with the more traditional degrees for anyone to access. Professional bodies may also work with institutes or licensed organizations to offer microcredentials directly to employees.

Microcredentials offer numerous benefits for employees, employers and organizations of all sizes. When designed correctly, microcredentials are flexible, portable and cost-effective to implement.

In Abuyog Community College, we will be implementing Project Baton (Abuyog Community College Response) a shift towards Skill-based and Microcreditailing approach to education. To me, this is something old yet given a new lease of life and demanded by the times.
We would like to have our people ready to get jobs even without the degree as long as they have the skills. They can just go back later and finish the degree.

GIVEN our human condition, marked always by all kinds of weaknesses, limitations, mistakes and other negative things, we should be ready to face and bear them, never by our lonesome, but always with Christ who is always around, ever ready to help us in many and often mysterious ways. We should develop the instinct to do this, training ourselves to always go to Christ especially when times get tough.

We are somehow reminded of this piece of advice in that gospel episode where a leper, despite his condition and the big crowd he had to contend with, managed to approach Christ asking for healing. And true enough, without further ado, he was healed. (cfr. Mt 8,1-4)

There is just one thing we have to bear in mind when we carry out this advice. We should see to it that our plea for help from Christ should not just be in pursuit of some personal convenience or advantage.

While that may be the immediate motive, the constant and ultimate motive should be that we would like be like God, sharers of his life and nature, as he wants us to be. When God gives us what we ask, our sense of gratitude should make us progress in our pursuit to become like God.

We should always remember that every event and circumstance of our life, whether good or bad in human terms, is meant to test us if we want to be like God as we should or we would simply want to be by ourselves.

The same is true when we ask for forgiveness for our sins which in the end is more important than just healing of some health issues. The contrition or repentance we have to make for our sins should be the perfect one, not the imperfect type.

In the latter, we would be sorry for our sins because of the ugliness of our sin. We would be sorry for our sins so we can feel good about ourselves. In the former, we would sorry for our sins out of love of God, out of our desire to be more and more like God as we should.
While we would always be forgiven even if our contrition is imperfect, that kind of repentance would sooner or later spoil us and would not give us the grace to avoid the same sins for which we are asking forgiveness. It may even lead us to a subtle kind of spiritual pride and vanity that is worse than the material or external one.

We should try our best to make a perfect contrition that will keep us humble and in need of God always, never daring to be simply on our own. With perfect contrition, we continue to make our journey toward heaven. With imperfect contrition, we somehow make a stop along the way which can open to some dangers.

It’s important that we purify and rectify our intention when we ask for forgiveness for our sins. For this, we need to do some practical and relevant exercises, since we have to contend with subtle enemies that can undermine our desire to make a perfect contrition.
Nowadays, those of us who simply make imperfect contrition when we go to confession, cannot help but fall to the same sins again and again. That’s because the grace of real, deep and thorough conversion has not been received properly.

Believers and non-believers converge this year when Catholics revere in faith the Holy Child Jesus through the image of the Señor Santo Niño of Tacloban whose image is now in Saint Michael the Archangel of Basey in this writer’s impoverished and perennially graft-ridden beautiful province of Samar. The pages of history bare that the fiesta celebration of Señor Santo Niño was moved from the usual January to June 30 as the significant day of its finding after being lost on a shipwreck. Its return to Tacloban City resulted in a miracle that cured a cholera pandemic that had caused many deaths and illness among the people of the city.

Since then, the celebration of the city fiesta was held every June 30 even if the Santo Niño parish join the whole country in celebrating the feast every January. Indeed, the Holy Child Jesus had attracted a myriad of devotees all over the country as it is uniquely a Filipino celebration not practiced in other Catholic countries. The celebration had been renowned all over the world.

The revelry in adoration and homage of the Holy Child Jesus are often through a dance parade and merrymaking, with colorful and well-crafted costumes flooding the streets in every place of celebration with people on the sidelines not merely standing spectators but are joining the beat of street dancers in choreographed motion.

As years went by, the celebration transformed from a mere religious event, to a socio-civic parade, to an eco-tourism activity and now a commercial moneymaking venture. The religious aspect had gradually been over-glossed by the commercial overture where the image of the Holy Child Jesus is submerged by giant commercial advertisements.

The religious prayers and songs accompanying the land procession had already been overwhelmed by the noisy rock metallic music of commercial products. The distribution of religious items such as novenas, rosaries and photo stamps of saints are now substituted with candies, juice tetra packs and other items being thrown to the crowd.

Worse, the celebrations had been marred by political power-play where one event is forced stopped as the powers that be are brandishing their clout and power over their defeated political adversaries. Amid all these brouhaha, people are made as blind followers of their political leaders, ready to rumble with their adversaries. The peace, love and happiness that are supposed to be the blessings from the grace of the Holy Child Jesus, are lost in the topsy-turvy stinky mud of dirty politics.

Then we see non-Catholic politicians getting the best seats and accommodation in church, as if they are not the root cause of the rattling outside the church. And people get on fanatical rituals that appears godly but mayhap be deceptively satanic as manifested by their praying to the Holy Child Jesus akin to venerating Saints by invoking “pray for us.”
Because the Holy Child Jesus is God the Son, we take a sigh in sincere prayer by saying, Señor Santo Niño, have mercy on us.
comments to alellema@yahoo.com

A social development arm of power distributor Manila Electric Co. (MERALCO) has committed to provide clean water and reliable services in underserved communities. The One Meralco Foundation (OMF) has initially installed a 3 kilowatt portable solar photovoltaic system to power up the Sitio Sapang Munti community’s integrated water system which provides access to potable supply that can be used for drinking, bathing, washing, and cooking.

As a beneficiary of the electrification program, the “Manila Water Foundation water facility can now filter, store, and distribute up to 10,000 liters of potable water through communal faucets 24/7.” Thus, the OMF would now be able to provide over 100 families of the Dumagat Tribe living in Norzagaray, Bulacan clean and safe water supply – following the energization of the community by the OMF

The OMF’s efforts to provide basic services to underserved communities has been expanded to beefing up its sustainable reforestation program which seeks to contribute to environment preservation and community improvement. Also, the OMF’s “One For Trees” program, they provide funds for reforestation activities like establishing nurseries, planting of seedlings adapted to certain seasons, and continually monitor some five million trees planted in the communities by 2025. The trees help provide livelihood to residents living around the conservation areas.

MY COMMENT:

The One Meralco Foundation commitment to provide underserved communities with basic needs such as potable water and sustainable livelihood is worth emulating. My wish is for OMF to extend the same program to other areas where Tribal groups have settled. An example is the community of Manubo in an upland barangay of Burauen, Leyte. While the Burauen LGU has been generously extending assistance in the form of hanging bridge, school site and buildings, and medical needs, NGOs like the OMF are much welcomed.
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