By LUZ RIMBAN
A person with disability (PWD) advocating community-based rehabilitation for PWDs was named 2016 Ninoy and Cory Aquino Fellowship Awardee in a ceremony at the U.S. Embassy Thursday.
Erlynn Jaucian, deputy executive director of the Albay-based Simon of Cyrene Community Rehabilitation and Development Foundation was recognized “for her resolute commitment in promoting the welfare and rights of persons with disabilities and inspiring them to be responsible and creative members of society.”
U.S. Ambassador Philip Goldberg handed Jaucian the plaque in the presence of Ballsy Aquino-Cruz, representative of the Aquino Family and the Ninoy and Cory Aquino Foundation. The award comes with a U.S. study tour she will embark on next month.
Jaucian, who had polio when she was three years old, was among the beneficiaries of the community-based rehabilitation (CBR) program for PWDs, Simon of Cyrene’s banner program that supported her physical rehabilitation and education.
What makes the CBR unique, she said, is the involvement of local government units and disabled people’s organizations in providing skills, services and an accessible environment for PWDs in Albay.
“My life’s goal is to continuously inspire PWDs, and to work for an inclusive, barrier-free society,” Jaucian said in her acceptance speech.
“(Erlynn Jaucian) pays it forward, working for other PWDs in the same foundation that assisted her while she herself was afflicted with polio,” Aquino-Cruz said, describing her as “a people power person.”
Aquino-Cruz traced the beginnings of the Ninoy and Cory Aquino Fellowship Awards to the years her mother Cory was president, when she wanted to leave behind the idea that “EDSA People Power was not just an event but a movement, a force for good made up of individuals and groups who truly care and work for the betterment of our country and people.”
Cory Aquino then mounted a drive “to search for who she called ‘people power people,’ Filipinos who lived the spirit of EDSA in their work.” And so the Ninoy Aquino Fellowship was born, renamed Ninoy and Cory Aquino Fellowship after Cory’s death in 2009.
U.S. Embassy officials called the Ninoy and Cory Aquino Fellowship the highest of the fellowships the State Department grants Filipinos because of the involvement of the Aquino Family in selecting awardees.
The Philippines marks this year the 30th anniversary of the EDSA People Power revolution that toppled the Marcos dictatorship and restored democracy.
Thursday’s event at the U.S. Embassy also marked the 75th year of the International Exchange Programs of the U.S. State Department, which has sent thousands of Filipinos in various fields on study tours in the United States.
(Two VERA Files trustees were recipients of the Fellowship. Luz Rimban was Ninoy Aquino Fellow in 2004, while Yvonne Chua received the fellowship in 2010, the first year it was renamed Ninoy and Cory Aquino Fellowship.)