U! Can Learn: U! Can's Third Strike

     The weather is changing in every hour and even in every half an hour due to typhoons visiting the country. And I think the bad weather condition has finally affected me.

     I ended up my work with a pinch of headache just earlier this afternoon. I felt pain and I had no choice but to find a perfect place to ease the pain. So, what I did was (right after leaving the construction site), I went straight to Trinoma searching for The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf’s outdoor branch. After searching for it, I immediately entered the store and took advantage of my free coupon for this month (courtesy of CBTL’s The Giving Journal). I tried to ease the pain by drinking a small apple pie tea latte (my newly-found favorite among the array of tea lattes) while reading articles from an architectural magazine.

     While reading those articles, I came to realize that, as a newly-proclaimed registered and licensed architect, I do need to learn much more things. Yes, I really need to. I still need to educate myself more, hone my skills more, and sharpen my principles more in order for me to widen my horizon as an architect. In short, I must continue learning.

     As I continue to contemplate on those realizations, I was reminded by an event entitled “U! Can Learn”, which took place last July 16, 2011 held at the Rainforest Park in Pasig City. The event was actually the third installment of U! Can (an 8-part event series hosted by U! Happy Events for Kids Foundation in partnership with The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf). The chosen beneficiary for this event was Jesus Loves Little Children Foundation, Inc. (an orphanage located in Pasig City) and the main objective was to give joy among orphans and to aid scholarship in order for them to experience a life full of learning.

     Among the last three events under U! Can, this one was the most unique event because of its nature-friendly setting and its theme, which was fun and games. Yes, the entire event was filled with games and each game required us volunteers together with our kids to work together hand in hand in order for us to be able to accomplish the required task. Each game gave us the opportunity to think strategically and creatively and as a result, we ended the day carrying with us not just memories, but leanings.

     I’m pretty sure that the kids learned a lot from the park’s educational tour, from the games set by the organizers, and from us volunteer. I can’t exactly give or enumerate the things that they’d learned from the event and from us volunteers because learning is basically unpredictable and boundless. But, if there’s one thing that I should elaborate… then that should be their realization. Through the event, those kids were able to realize that there are still a lot of people willing to give time and effort just for them to be able to attend schooling and have a brighter future. That simple realization would simply alter the way they see life, the way they value education, and the way they should pursue for a much brighter future.

     And for our part as volunteers, we did learn from them (the kids) too. We learned to have fun in spite of our hectic schedule and work overload; we learned to give joy amidst our personal difficulties and challenges that we’re facing; we learned to give love even though we sometimes lack love from others; we learned to share our blessings even though our personal expenses demand more; and we learned to value education more than we usually do.

     And as a conclusion for this blog post, let me leave you with these thoughts:

*Learning is a never-ending process and there’s no such rule on what age or up to what extent of our life we should stop learning.

*We should always remind ourselves that being much older from the rest doesn’t give us the authority to just teach the younger ones without even learning from them.

*Learning can always be acquired by everyone and it is the responsibility of everyone to share it with their fellow men.

*Don’t consider yourself exemplary if you are part of the learned people. Instead, consider yourself exemplary only when you’ve been able to share to other people what you’ve learned.