I received this e-mail from a friend’s friend.

March 09, 2004

Dear Keoni,

Greetings in the Grace of our Lord!

This is Sally M. Valenton of Oriental Mindoro we’ve meet at Chowking with Bro. [Edmon]. I hope you still remember me. I hope you are in good health. I would like to share something very special with you….

In the year 2000 Mrs. Delia Victorino Leffingwell, a Filipina from San Diego, California came to us . she even went with me and visit too our Mangyang school at the foot of Mt. Halcon. She went back to California after a week and on December 2001 she acted as our childrens’ Santa Claus on our Christmas Party and Program that year. Before she left back to California she donate a piece of lot in San Lorenzo. This lot donations is 304 sq. meters and was adjacent/close to an our existing school in Lalud, Calapan City.

Her and our intention too for this gift is to build a center where our indigenous Tagalogs in Calapan and our Mangyans can learn some concrete ways on how to earn for a living and be not be a burden of the community where they belong. For this idea, we designed a project proposal: CONSTRUCTION OF A VOCATIONAL TECHNICAL SCHOOL to offer the following courses; WELDING, AUTOMOTIVE MECHANIC, DRESSMAKING & TAILORING, FOOD PROCESSING, COMPUTER BASICS AND DESKTOP PUBLISHING, ANIMAL RAISING AND AGRICULTURAL TECHNOLOGY. How to maintain the school is also well-stated on this proposal.

Relative to this, we would like to request again for your help by re-sending/ forwarding this proposal to any institution / organization or individual person whom you know, can be of help or can share in any way to the materialization of this project or simply send us the name, email address, business or home address of the person / institution or organization to write, and, we will write them depends on your advise.

If with your help this project materialized we can say then, that this is the height of our concrete love and services to our poor people. With this, we can be sure that all of our efforts will not go in vain. I would like to share with you the present situation of our recipients most especially the Mangyans. After graduation in Grade VI and even in High School, they went back home (in the mountain), again wearing their common “bahag” for boys and “Ulango” and G-strings from coco midribs for girls. They go with their parents working as tenants with the Tagalogs in the lowlands as calamansi picker or grass cutter. After a days work, they were given an amount of P50.00 to a maximum of P100.00 and sometimes “inuutang pa po iyon sa kanila”.

Now with these plan, we are sure that “Mabubuhay po ng maayos ang ating mga tinutulungang mag-aaral”. Please help us meet people to help us build this school. Below is our proposal. The attachments: Building Plan, Lists of construction materials and Philippine Daily Inquirer – Provincial Feature (Featuring our school and recipients) dated November 6, 2003 is quite difficult to attach but we can send them as you advised.

May the good Lord grant and reward you and your family more blessings and success!

Thank you very much and we hope to hear from you…

In Saint Lorenzo Ruiz,

ROSALINA M. VALENTON
SLRFLC, Founder/ President