ASOG Conducts Culture-Building Workshop for ALSE OF-LIFE Volunteer Resource Speakers

The Ateneo School of Government Executive Education Program, through the Ateneo Overseas Filipinos’ Leadership, Innovation, Financial Literacy and Social Entrepreneurship (OF-LIFE) Program, organized a Culture-Building Workshop for the resource persons/volunteer teachers on November 25-27, 2022. It was well-attended by 21 participants from Singapore and the Philippines, the activity marks the beginning of a year-long process of preparations for the Ateneo Leadership & Social Entrepreneurship (ALSE)/OF-LIFE Second Global Homecoming to be held in December 2023. The Second OF LIFE Global Homecoming will mark the Program’s 15th year of continuous operations.

The Culture Building Workshop activity aimed to further build the core of volunteers at all levels of the OF-LIFE community. It was meant to help members continue to live out the Program’s values and principles and promote a sustained involvement of stakeholders towards nation-building, care for the planet and society. The ALSE OF-LIFE Program brought together its culture-bearers to review and articulate the values it espouses from its Ignatian roots.

The workshop began with a Friday night Holy Mass celebrated by Fr. Pat Falguera, SJ, which was then followed by an expectation check and other preliminary discussion and a getting-to-know activity was done on the first day, setting the mood for the next days.

The second day was a series of thematic sessions organized around the Ignatian principles of Magis, Cura Personalis, Finding God in All Things/Persons, and becoming Men and Women for Others. The objective was to come to a common understanding of these principles amongst volunteer faculty, and reflect on how they are in turn articulated in the ALSE OF-LIFE Program-level values. Some of the practical applications and issues on the way forward and other considerations for 2023 were also discussed on the last day, especially in light of the upcoming activities such as a major publication for the 2nd Global Homecoming to mark the 15th Anniversary in December 2023, in addition to the training programs scheduled in the first quarter of 2023.

A closing Holy Mass bookended the activity, and was offered especially for the success of the plans, projects, and activities made for the coming school year of OF-LIFE then a fellowship lunch. Ateneo School of Government Dean Randy Tuaño joined the volunteer faculty on the last day as an expression of support and camaraderie that was much appreciated by everyone.

The program has been touching lives of countless Overseas Filipinos, their families, and other cooperators in some 26 countries, with close to 5000 alumni having gone through the Program. The ALSE OF-LIFE culture bearers hope to be able to reach out to more Overseas Filipinos and their families to demonstrate that, despite the distance, everyone remains humanly connected.