29 Couples Tie Knot in CCSC Group Wedding

Obedience to the Lord’s leading was seen in the lives of  29 couples who pledged lifelong commitment to each other and to God at a group wedding organized by the Covenant Community Service Cooperative (CCSC).  

“We praise God for their decision to get married,” said Froi Parado, CCSC general manager.  “This is an indication of the spiritual growth of the couples, of a desire to live in accordance with God’s plan.” Twenty-eight of the couples had been in a live-in relationship.

Of the 58 individuals who got married, more than half are employees of factories where CCSC has ministry.  Two of the couples are from the Doxo factory in Manila, 10 are from a garments factory in Dasmarinas, Cavite, and 17 are from another garments factory in Carmona, Cavite.  All couples underwent marriage counselling with CCSC pastors Fortunato Bayucan, Jesse Malibiran, and Dr. Alfredo Crespo before the ceremony.

Cherie Carimpong, who works at the factory in Cavite said, "We were hesitant at first, but our kids overheard our discussion about finally getting married, and they motivated us to pursue the plan."  

CCSC is a member of the Center for Community Transformation Group of Ministries. It ministers to informal service workers and factory workers through spiritual development, job generation,  social services, micro finance loans, and savings mobilization. 

Newlyweds Menardo and Dolores Alison said,  "Kami po ay lubos na nagpapasalamat sapagkat nabigyan po ng katuparan ang matagal  po naming hinahangad sa buhay. Dahil po sa abala sa trabaho at kakulangang financial hindi po ito matutupad kung hindi sa tulong ng lahat ng tao na tumulong na mabuo ang group wedding. God bless po! Satisfied at masaya po kami sa nangyaring kasalan. Nawa'y marami pa pong couple ang mabigyan po ng ganitong kasalan. Thank you po!"

This is the second group wedding organized by CCSC.  The first one, held in November 2011, was done in partnership with the Kaibigan Ministry of CCT which ministers to street dwellers. Read story here: cctkaibigan.blogspot.com/2011/12/21-kaibigan-couples-tie-knot.html‎

The wedding was held at the Tagaytay Retreat and Training Center on November 9, 2013.

                                                                         Reporting: Elmer Valencia, Photos: Art Trinidad

Factory Workers Donate Blood

Workers at two garment factories in Carmona and Dasmarinas, Cavite have donated a total of 66 liters of  blood  since they began a bloodletting partnership with the Philippine General Hospital in July of this year. 

No incentive is given to donors except the assurance that they may avail of free blood at the PGH blood bank when they need  it, as long as CCSC has enough reserves, said Noeh Vios, cooperative training officer for the Covenant Community Service Cooperative, apparel subcontractor for the factories.  “Relatives of blood donors may also avail of the blood,” Vios added.  “Beyond that is the satisfaction of knowing your donation helps save the life  of a sick or injured person.”   

“Blood donation is a nearly painless process,” said Dr. John Tabije of the Center for Community Transformation health team. “The actual collection of 500 ml of blood takes about 15 minutes and the only pain a donor will feel is something like a quick pinch when the needle is inserted.”  

According to the Philippine National Red Cross, healthy men and women 18 - 65 years weighing at least 110 pounds may donate blood.  Some 2,000 units of blood are transfused into hospital patients in the Philippines everyday.  One unit of blood measures 450 ml.

Another bloodletting  event  at the Carmona factory is scheduled for November 16.

 CCSC is a member of the Center for Community Transformation Group of Ministries

CCT Co-op Offers Multi-purpose Loans to CCSC Members

The management committee at a garments factory in Dasmarinas, Cavite study a portion of the Scriptures
at the beginning of a regular meeting.  Leading the Bible study is Pastor Fortunato Bayucan of the Covenant
Community Service Cooperative. 

Members of the Covenant Community Service Cooperative (CCSC) may now receive loans from the CCT Savings and Credit Cooperative (CCT Co-op) following the signing of  a memorandum of agreement between the two cooperatives.  

According to Froi Parado, CCSC general manager, the loans are being offered to arrest the problem of CCSC members borrowing from usurious moneylenders and being caught in a debt trap.  Informal moneylenders are known to charge as much as 20% interest on loans to workers who are driven to borrow in situations such as medical emergencies or to pay their children's college fees.

The loan may be three times the amount of the CCSC member’s capital build-up with an interest of 1.5 per month for a loan term of up to six months.  Collection will be done by salary deduction. 

CCSC, which has a membership of 4,200, is apparel subcontractor for two garments factories in Cavite. Both CCSC and the CCT Co-op are members of the Center for Community Transformation Group of Ministries. 

Factory Workers Donate to Pablo Victims

           Cristy Valencia of the CCT finance department receives a donation for victims of Typhoon Pablo
collected by factory workers and members of the Covenant Community Service Cooperative (CCSC).
Handing over the donation are Froi Parado,  CCSC peer servant (center) and  Elmer Valencia,
 CCSC  HRAD officer.  

In the spirit of Christian love and brotherhood, factory workers in Dasmarinas, Cavite donated P15,800 to victims of Typhoon Pablo which hit the island of Mindanao during the first week of December 2012. The factory workers are members of the Center for Community Transformation (CCT)  Covenant Community Service Cooperative.

Typhoon Pablo (International Name: Bopha) hit Mindanao on December 4, 2012,  leaving 1,067 dead and more than 800 missing according to government reports as of December 22. 

Benefiting from  the donation are affected CCT community partners and staff  in Davao Oriental, Surigao, Cagayan de Oro, and Compostela Valley.  A total of 175 CCT community partners and 30 staff were affected by Pablo, according to Mike Salili, CCT peer servant for field operations management.   Among these, 49 lost their homes.  

“The workers collected the funds on their own, in less than a week, without any prompting of prodding from management,” said Froi Parado, CCSC peer servant. 

"I've Been Blessed," Says Former Street Dweller

Roy Reyes, a former street dweller, went from having zero skills to being
 multiple-skilled.  He passed TESDA assessment in steel works, 
hydraulic backhoe operation, and carpentry . 

Adopted Child. Roy Reyes, a man in his early forties, still breaks into tears when he remembers his past.  At 12, he learned that he was an adopted child. Shocked and unable to accept the fact, he ran away from home in Cebu and found his way to Bohol, where he did hard labor on a sugarcane plantation. By the time he turned 20  he had ended up in Manila where he joined an informal community of  street dwellers and took to crime.   He moved from snatching handbags and necklaces, to picking pockets, to robbing jeepney passengers.

The police threw him into jail twice,  but he went right back to crime when released.  "I didn't want to steal, but it was something I had to do to survive," he says.  

In October 2010 he had just been released from prison a third time and was planning another jeepney holdup  when instead, he joined a feeding session led by the Kaibigan Ministry of the Center for Community Transformation  (CCT) Group of Ministries.  The food was being distributed by a young man, Frankie Libre, who said he also used to live on the street and was also frequently jailed for theft but that his life had been turned around by God.

That was the beginning of Roy's attendance in a series of feeding sessions and Bible studies. He learned of a Bible verse where Jesus Christ said, "Come unto me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." It was a verse that seemed to have been written exactly for him.  "I  was tired of living on the streets, tired of committing crime. In fact, I sometimes hoped I would get shot and killed  in one of those robberies which would mean the end of all my hardship." But before that could happen, he turned his life over completely to God.

From Zero Skills to NC2 Holder. Shortly afterward, Roy gladly accepted an invitation to join a team of workers who would construct buildings at the Tagaytay Retreat and Training Center.  He also grabbed a chance to learn carpentry work, how to be a steel man, and  how to operate a hydraulic backhoe through Sikhay sa Paggawa (SIPAG), a project being overseen by CCT and run in partnership with the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA), the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) with funding from the Alagad Party List.  "Dati po wala akong kaalam-alam.  Ngayon po NC2 na ako," he says with gratitude. ("I used to have no skills at all, but now I have a national certificate 2."  With these skills and with God's blessings Roy knows he will be able to give his children a better life than he had.

"Kaya po ako naiiyak dahil ayoko na sana maalaala ang pinagdaanan ko.  Pero naiiyak din po ako dahil may pag-asa na po ako," he says.  "Napakabuti po ng Diyos sa akin. Pinag-pala po ako." ("I am in tears  because I no longer wish to remember my past.  But I am also in tears because of the hope I have been given.  God is so good to me. I've been blessed.") 

Photos below show SIPAG workers and members of the Kaibigang Maaasahan Multi-purpose Cooperative building the Visions of Hope Christian School in Puypuy, Bay, Laguna. Most of them are holders of TESDA certificates. 

For information on the CCT Group of Ministries, its programs and target beneficiaries,  please visit  www.cct.org.ph/new/.

Photos by Myra Gaculais del Rosario

The Mervin Parana Story

Turbulent Early Years. Mervin Parana, 31, grew up in Pagsanjan, Laguna, the second child in a brood of six. His parents split up when he was about 12 and for this reason he was unable to study beyond first year high school. Soon after, he went to Pampanga where he worked as a 'boy' (a lowly-paid helper) for an uncle.

Learning Masonry. At about the age of 20 he returned to Laguna and found a job as a laborer on construction sites. Within the next two years he gradually learned the work of a mason and soon grew confident enough with his skills to walk into construction sites and ask a foreman if there were any openings for a mason. From 2002 to 2009 he worked at several sites ranging from low-cost, one-story residential buildings to high-rises. 

All those years he also brought his 'bisyo' (vice) to the construction sites. He would join drinking sprees with co-workers and end up in brawls with them. Occasionally he would be unable to work because of a hangover.

A Changed Life. Then in 2009 he found work at what was to become the Center for Community Transformation-Training and Development Institute campus in Magdalena, Laguna. All workers were required to attend devotions (an hour of reading and meditating on God's Word) before the start of work each day. On Saturdays they attended corporate worship, a service patterned after Sunday services of Christian churches.

His employment with CCT brought him to other construction sites such as the retreat center in Tagaytay, the boarding school for children in Puypuy, Laguna, and the resettlement village for transformed street dwellers in Cabanatuan City. “In Cabanatuan we had devotions in the mornings and in the evenings,” he said. “In the beginning I would join simply for the sake of work but over time I began to look forward to reading the Bible and to listening to the preaching.” He has since given his life to God and his life has been wonderfully transformed. “During my teen years and my twenties I never went to church,” he says. “I prayed but when I did, there seemed to be something missing with how I talked with God. I've since learned how to come to God in prayer.” His drinking habit no longer has control over his free time. “I used to be hotheaded when dealing with co-workers. I have more patience now.”

Family Man and TESDA Exam Passer. Today Mervin is a hardworking father of four (his children range in age from eight years to nine months). “My wife and I practice family planning,” he says. “I want to be able to send all my children to college so they can find good jobs and not experience what I went through.”

He is also one of 39 CCT-assisted masons who passed a masonry competency exam given by the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) in February of this year. 

The workers underwent TESDA assessment as part of Sikhay sa Paggawa (SIPAG), a project  being overseen by CCT and run in partnership with TESDA , the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) with funding from the Alagad Party List. Mervin's TESDA certificate attests that he can work according to standards expected in the global workplace.

Tips for Fellow Masons. So what makes a good mason? Mervin says, “If you know you're working on a tight budget, you must be able work within that budget. One must be patient, because impatience and hastiness result in 'pingas' – chipped corners. And, a good mason has to be able to concentrate, must be systematic.”

For information on the CCT Group of Ministries, its programs and target beneficiaries,  please visit  www.cct.org.ph/new/.

SIPAG Workers Receive TESDA Certification

SIPAG workers from Pasay City take a fulfilling  first look at their TESDA certificates.

Seventy-five construction workers received certificates of competence from the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) during the 2011 general assembly of the Kaibigang Maaasahan Multipurpose Cooperative and Covenant Community Service Cooperative. About half of the men are former street dwellers while are the rest are husbands, sons, or brothers of community partners in the micro-finance program of the Center for Community Transformation (CCT) Group of Ministries. They live in Taguig, Muntinlupa, Pasay, Manila and Quezon City.   

The workers underwent TESDA assessment as part of Sikhay sa Paggawa (SIPAG), a project  being overseen by CCT and run in partnership with TESDA , the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) with funding from the Alagad Party List. TESDA certificates are awarded only to workers who can perform to standards expected in the global workplace.

Former Representative Diogenes Osabel, president of the Alagad Party List, said the SIPAG project is a bridge between local home-owners and TESDA, DTI, and CCT. He said there is a demand for trustworthy workers in local communities. “Building the confidence and capacity of workers is part of our fight, by non-violent means, against poverty. We want to be part of shaping the future,” he said.

Alagad Party List President Diogenes Osabel

Atty. Ted Pascua, TESDA deputy director general for operations, said society must not look down on construction workers because, “We all have a place under the sun.” In encouraging the men to have a vision beyond their construction work he told the familiar story of the three bricklayers. “Be like the bricklayer who said he was building a cathedral,” he said. To CCT and SIPAG project workers he said, “Build on what you have started. Your efforts will be blessed.” 

Atty. Ted Pascua, TESDA deputy director general for operations

In a message based on the beatitudes, Pastor EJ del Mundo, head pastor for the CCT Group of Ministries,said “God wants to bless you spiritually, not just materially.” He told the former street dwellers, “Kung ikaw ay taong kalye nung dumating si Jesus, malamang kasama ka niya. (If you were a street dweller when Jesus came [to dwell among us], it's likely that you would have been among his companions.)” 

Pastor EJ del Mundo, CCT Group head pastor

KMMC members sing of God's love.

Charlie Galas, former street dweller who was certified for masonry and carpentry skills, said he would do his best to repay the kindness shown him by CCT. 

For information on the CCT Group of Ministries, its programs and target beneficiaries,  please visit  www.cct.org.ph/new/.