Editorial

want to help at first. Quilas simply wore them down. “No retreat,” he says. “No surrender.” He is driven by a need to keep PWDs from begging.

Nobility, too, is something Dr. Benedict Edward Valdez, 47, wants to emphasize. While “selling nobility” isn’t easy, the trauma surgeon from Davao City has found “a controllable number of volunteers” in his three areas of service. He operates for free on persons with cleft lips and palates (which would otherwise cost them P120,000); has set up and still refines training and systems to improve pre-hospital care as medical director of the Davao 911 Emergency Medical Services; and seeks improvements in the quality of emergency medical and trauma services. Dr. Valdez began as a volunteer 22 years ago for the Maharlika Charity Foundation, of which he is now president. “In 30 minutes,” he says of the free surgeries he provides, “you can change a life.”

What compels people to give so much of their energy to help others? Not an excess of time or wealth, but a choice not to wallow in personal difficulties, and to look outward instead, on other people whose lives they can make better. What these exemplary individuals share is an ability to inspire and organize. There is also the sense that they no longer see their work as a sacrifice, but as the privilege of serving others. Their work, while difficult, sustains them.