1967-1968

Building on the foundations laid on the Club’s maiden year, Pres. Luis “Louie” Faustino expanded the operations of the MCC postal station, doubling the number of post office boxes in response to requests. PO box rental provided the fledgling club with the income it needed for Club operations and project implementation.

The postal facility also gave the Club a public image boost. As the first post office branch in the Philippines, it attracted media attention. It was featured in the Philippine Herald, a major broadsheet, in its 21 June 1968 issue. It also merited space in the December 1968 issue of The Rotarian, the official magazine of Rotary International. As early as then, RC Makati was making waves as a club to watch.

It was on this year that the Club set in motion a wide-ranging program in vocational service designed to uplift lives through skills training, job placement assistance and entrepreneurship.

Its initial salvo in this department was a multi-faceted livelihood and training program for the residents of Barrio Pinagkaisahan, one of the smaller barrios (now called barangay) of Makati. With Bert Montinola as chairman, the Club partnered with the Philippine Rural Reconstruction Movement (PRRM) for a project that offered classes in dressmaking, embroidery, bamboo craft and mushroom culture. With the skills they acquired, the participants embarked on ventures that generated income for their families, thus decreasing their dependence on government dole-outs and building their self esteem.

The year also saw the initiation of a waitering class for jobless out-of-school youth in Barrio Pio del Pilar, also in Makati. Under this project chaired by Bec Panlilio, trainees learned the basics of waiting on tables, serving food and drinks, and attending to the needs of customers, skills that equipped them for jobs in hotels and restaurants. The project ushered in a wave of training programs in waitering in later years.

The sixties were a golden period for Philippine agriculture with the development of the much celebrated “miracle rice,” a variety that yielded bumper harvests not seen before. As Filipino farmers basked in their fortune, their counterparts in Indonesia were suffering from poor yields. In response to a request from Indonesia, RC Makati shipped a donation of 40 sacks of the so-called “miracle rice” to Indonesia for planting by Indonesian farmers. The donation helped the farmers recover their losses and get back on their feet, thus saving their country’s ailing rice industry.