|
FOR a
change, we wish to focus on something refreshing, an
initiative that transcends politics and class, that
provides hope in a world rendered cynical by crooks and
deceivers, and which has done far more than most, albeit
in a simple way, to boost the human spirit.
This
week saw the arrival in the country of Operation Smile,
the world-renowned volunteer medical-services
organization that has rendered reconstructive surgery,
for free, to thousands of indigent children and youth
disfigured by facial deformities such as cleft palate
and cleft lips.
The
arrival of the mission this time is significant, as the
noble project, first launched in the Philippines, is now
marking its 25th anniversary. Even as this piece is
being written, the 165 volunteers from Operation Smile
have farmed out to Cebu, Naga, Davao and Makati to
perform 500 new surgeries—hopefully adding these to the
20,000 children who have since been successfully
operated on since 1982.
Dr.
William Magee, one of the founders, put it so eloquently
when he addressed the media this week: the project is
more than just a medical treatment; “it’s creating
life.” He noted how many of those they reached out to
have “had very low self-esteem, hiding and losing their
chance to productivity.”
Many of
those helped by the project have since bloomed into very
confident, happy individuals with a sense of purpose and
mission, established in their careers and contributing
to society. One of the poster beneficiaries interviewed
by the media, Lorelei Oguilla, was born with a cleft lip
and cleft palate, and recalled how, as a child, she
avoided socializing with other children. But a series of
successful operations later, she finished college and
has since become a successful graphic-arts designer,
with an award to boot: Artisan of the Year.
Unlike
some shallow CSR campaigns of some companies, Operation
Smile doesn’t have just one or a dozen “poster children”
to show for the quarter of a century it has been on
mission. Twenty thousand children saved from what would
have been a life doomed to unproductivity because they
could not study, work or socialize—and worse, bore a
constant sense of wretchedness—is no mean feat.
Any
child who needed to have such reconstructive surgery
would have required anywhere from P60,000 to P100,000 to
pull it through; certainly an impossibility given the
odds in a country where some people sell their kidneys
to transplant network groups just to feed the family.
To
anyone who thinks the work of Operation Smile is no big
deal, attention is invited to the heartbreaking story of
the 11-year-old Davao girl Mariannet Amper, who hanged
herself on November 2 after despairing of the repeated
instances when poverty frustrated her dreams to go to
school and help her parents, burdened by poverty and
lack of access to those simple things that could have
made life a little bit better. The reports said
Mariannet literally sighed in her diary, found after her
death, that she had lost count of the times she had to
skip school—even though tuition is free in public
schools—because she had no money for transportation or
the simplest form of “baon” (snacks).
Now,
poverty, as stated in an earlier editorial here, seems
to have been overdiagnosed by so many experts, some of
whom do parachute work in a slum colony, get hefty fees
for their analysis, and give reports that remain on some
bureaucrat’s shelf until someone thinks of cribbing it
one day when there’s money to be spent for the
often-fought, never-successful, vaunted “war on
poverty.”
At the
end of the day, the only ones who really strike a blow
against poverty and wretchedness are the ones who think
of simple solutions that can have the most enduring
results at relatively modest costs, such as Operation
Smile; or who can see through the plight of thousands of
other Mariannets whose hopes are crushed early on by a
system that can’t fully translate the constitutional
mandate of free education because it doesn’t liberate
them from the other clutches of poverty like
malnutrition, physical marginalization from schools and
lack of access to services, among others.
They are
the people who really “get it,” so to speak, and,
knowing what needs to be done, “just do it,” as the
sneakers ad says.
A world of entertainment
The
walkout by the Writers Guild of America is barely three
days old, hardly long enough for either side to register
any effect aside from the spate of reruns on late-night
TV and Comedy Central.
While
the writers were walking the picket lines, however,
consumers around the world were buying more than 1.8
million pocket-sized music and video players, 600,000
video-game machines and countless video games to play on
them. They picked up 2.1 million computers, 140,000
camcorders and 9 million cell-phones, at least 1 million
of them capable of tuning in video from the Internet.
Meanwhile, more than 14 million people spent up to two
hours a day on MySpace, Facebook or other social
networks, and more than 5 million spent about an hour,
on average, watching video clips on YouTube. An
undisclosed number used Joost’s file-sharing software to
tune in TV-quality programming, most of it coming from
outside the major studios. And at Mininova, one of many
file-sharing search sites, users started downloading
nearly 10 million files—most of them bootlegged TV shows
and movies.
Put
another way, consumers are rapidly equipping themselves
to tap into entertainment sources that don’t contribute
a dime to Hollywood or the writers’ union. It’s not a
rebellion as much as an evolution, powered mainly by
forces that didn’t exist during the last guild work
stoppage in 1988. The disruptive technology in those
days was cable TV and its expanded channel lineup. Now,
it’s the Internet, digital video recorders, game
consoles and portable devices that offer interactive
experiences. At the same time, it’s much easier for
people outside Hollywood to create grassroots
entertainment. YouTube may not be HBO, but it beats the
heck out of community-access cable.
Another
difference from 1988 is that the digital transformation
is happening with stunning speed. YouTube went from zero
to 100 million clips viewed each day in seven months.
Mininova went from zero to 3 billion cumulative
downloads in less than three years. That’s why both
sides would be ill-served by a protracted walkout,
particularly when the sticking point is Internet
revenue. The risk is that, in the interim, viewers will
drift completely out of Hollywood’s reach. ---Los
Angeles Times editorial |
