Chinese Sugbuana trailblazers

This week is the week of the Chinese New Year and Spring Festival. We join the celebration by featuring the Chinese among the Sugbuana trailblazers in the  Cebu Provincial Women’s Commission’s Heritage Cards.

First, there was Doña Benigna Cui. She has been described as “donor and first administrator of the Hospicio de San Jose, the first and only home for the aged in the Philippines totally funded by a private endowment.”

This “home for invalid and abandoned elderly of the municipalities of Carcar, Dumanjug, Ronda, Alcantara, Moalboal, Aloguinsan, Pinamungahan, Toledo, and Balamban” was established by law in 1925. In 1926, Doña Benigna and Don Pedro “endowed the Hospicio with income from their extensive properties in Barili and southern Cebu.” The Hospicio in Barili continues to be administered by the Cuis. It serves senior citizens outside of the original mentioned, even from quite distant areas.

I wonder how well the scholars of Doña Modesta Singson-Gaisano know her.  Her card reveals that together with her husband Jose Sy Lingkee, she started in business with a general merchandise store in San Nicolas in 1933. Since it grew significantly, the store was relocated to Cebu City. With her husband’s early death, she became “matriarch” of her family and her business. The family enterprise expanded into the southern Philippines’ largest chain of “superstores.” These declare that they “provide mass consumers with quality merchandise at the lowest price.”

Doña Modesta had been involved with community affairs. She provided assistance to the guerrillas in the Second World War. Early on, she provided “scholarships to indigent students.” She was a big contributor to several “causes and institutions as the YLAC Free School.”

Rosemarie Young-Gaisano, Doña Modesta’s grandchild, is now vice president and comptroller supervising 11 Gaisano department stores in Mindanao. Here, she leads Cebu Gaisano Main, Country Mall, Gaisano Bogo and Gaisano Balamban.

With such power and influence, Rosemarie is far from pompous. Her “desk is not much different from the rest of the employees of Gaisano Main where she holds fort.” Her card describes her as an “innovative Cebu taipan” and says: “Rosemarie gives a warm womanly touch with loads of humor to big business in Cebu.”

Environmental concerns challenge  Martina “Beling” Go Ching Hai. She organized the Federated Organization of Women in Active and Responsive Development (FORWARD) in 1990. “The UP Association of Philippine Technologists, Scientists and Inventors invited her to speak at an environmental conference in UP Diliman in 1993 to share FORWARD experiences with greening of Cebu City and Siquijor municipalities.”

FORWARD received an award of recognition for its “Save Mother Earth Activities” during the Fidel Ramos presidency. It built partnerships: with the Rotary Club of Cebu Fuente,  with Chiba, Japan Rotary Club for annual tree plantings and with MCWD for it pocket forest in Talamban.

“Beling” continues her involvement with FORWARD.  Since 2001, every year “FORWARD leads the Cebu Community in the International Clean Up the World campaign in this part of the country.”

In the promotion of justice, the cards have Jocelyn Uy Po, “Feminist Judge in Word and Deed.” Her intense concern for women began when she was chosen president of Federacion Internacionale De Abogados (FIDA), 1996-2000. As a founding member of the Provincial Women’s Commission (PWC), she advocated for the Gender and Development program and budget for the Commission’s activities. She played an important role in the passage of an Anti-Domestic Violence Ordinance for the province. Cebu had an anti-domestic violence law ahead of the national law.

The academe has “UP Cebu College’s multiawarded professor: Felisa Uy Etemadi.” Sun.Star Cebu named her “one of Cebu’s most influential people.” In 2000, Baron Who’s Who counted her among “Asia 500” Leaders of the New Century. Cebu City recognized her as Most Outstanding Individual. In the Feminist Centennial Celebration of 2005, she was a Sugbuana awardee. This was reaffirmed during the International Women’s Day of 2006.

Of course, Feliz is basically an educator, well loved by her students whom she continues to mentor even after graduation. Her excellence as an educator was recognized by the Metrobank Foundation through the Most Outstanding College Teacher.

The Cebu community has been acquainted and assisted her researches on “local governance, Cebu’s economic growth, the environment, watershed management, and urban poverty.” Prof. Etemadi “has assisted nongovernment organizations; she also helped to bring issues of children, women, and marginalized groups to policy makers.” The UP Alumni Association awarded her for her contribution in poverty reduction.

So the heritage cards aptly describes her. Etemadi “exemplifies the best of what the academe has molded and offers this at the service of the government and civil society, genuinely making a difference and effecting authentic societal change.”

The cards clearly show how  Chinese Cebuanas have enriched our lives. Taken as a whole, they reveal the diversity in Cebu community.  The cards can be viewed  in the LAW Center Inc. website: www.womenlawcenter.org.