Carmen Reyes Zubiaga: promoting economic independence.
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Neither
poverty nor polio can slow down Carmen Reyes Zubiaga, who has thrown herself into
the cause of the disabled from the Philippines to Cambodia
Paralyzed by polio at
the age of a year-and-a-half in exceedingly poor circumstances, Carmen Reyes Zubiaga
has spent a lifetime battling the odds. Today, she is the chief of several organizations
and the leading light in her country for the movement seeking to uplift the plight
of those who, like her, have been shorn of a normal physical life.
Born the sixth of nine children of a carpenter and laundry woman, Carmen has lived
most of her life in Taytay, Rizal, a municipality at the edge of the sprawling national
capital of the Philippines, Metro Manila. Navigating the winding, narrow streets
of Taytay requires great dexterity while dodging a torrent of traffic and people.
But Carmen is a master of this labyrinth. On the day of our meeting, she beat me
to the place of assignation by an embarrassing 20 minutes, despite my two fully operational
legs and four automobile wheels. Carmen arrived via tricycle, the motorized pedicab
that is a popular mode of public transport.
Campus
activist
I
miss her the first time I survey the restaurant, because I fail to see the wheelchair
and the woman who turns out to be Carmen Reyes Zubiaga seems far too young for someone
so accomplished. She has set up three organizations and a foundation—all dedicated
to supporting the disabled through micro-credit programmes, scholarships, and other
forms of assistance. Not only did she create these groups, but she also devotes virtually
all of her time to them without financial compensation.
This remarkably pretty and gentle person contrasts with the steely and authoritarian
persona she exudes by voice over the telephone. A strong vocal command is clearly
essential to impose her will in a society that customarily downplays individual volition.
“My mother said I was very hard-headed as a child,” she laughs. “I didn’t even know
what a wheelchair looked like,” she says, recalling her childhood and early adolescence
spent crawling on the floor because her family couldn’t afford a wheelchair. At the
age of 14, she took the initiative to write to a ladies’ club asking for support,
which they readily supplied. While her parents were unable to offer much materially,
they were generous in their support. “They never treated me as a special person,”
she says, which meant, “in my family, I never experienced any discrimination.”
Poverty also forced her to stop temporarily her education after elementary school.
But ten years later, Carmen resumed her studies through the assistance of a Belgian
missionary, Sister Valeriana Baerts, and the institute she founded, Tahanang Walang
Hagdanan (House Without Stairs), which is now the country’s foremost agency advancing
the plight of the disabled.
Though many scoffed at her for daring to enter college, Carmen rose to the top of
her class while contributing to comic books to help pay for her studies. Struck by
the number of wheelchair-bound students (around 10), she launched her first volunteer
project to raise funds to construct ramps for wheelchair access around campus.
Tahanang proved to be Carmen’s well-spring—not only did she work as a volunteer throughout
her student days, but after graduating, she took up the roles of public relations
executive and project developer for nine years. This experience enabled her to hone
her skills in organizing, marketing, fund-raising and networking. It was also at
Tahanang that she met her husband, who is not disabled.
After Tahanang, she offered her services to the United Nations Development Program,
which sent her to Cambodia to launch the first government endeavour—a semi-autonomous
agency—to deal with its teeming numbers of disabled, a legacy of the bitter civil
war.
Even though conditions are worse there than they are in the Philippines, she says,
the centre managed to set up employment opportunities for the disabled. But her greatest
fulfilment lay in setting an example for Cambodians with disability, who, she says,
formerly had a single destiny—begging.
Business
from home
“When I would go to the market in Cambodia, I’d be regarded differently,” she says,
“because I was buying, not begging. So for Cambodian people, I painted a different
picture of the disabled.”
The disabled in Cambodia had previously been reduced to the most abject status, robbed
of any hope of happiness, love, marriage, and children. She, on the other hand, had
crossed an ocean to go to Cambodia and had brought along her husband and two children.
When she returned to the Philippines after three years, a third child was added to
her brood, a girl entrusted to her parentage by a very poor Cambodian couple.
Back home in the Philippines, she set up three organizations and a foundation to
help people with handicaps pursue an education, learn new skills and start their
own businesses. The organizations clearly reject the charity of the missionaries.
Instead, they promote self-assurance and economic independence. “You have to create
wealth before it can be distributed,” says Carmen. So for example, to fund educational
scholarships, her foundation is running a cooperative grocery aimed at becoming a
chain.
Employment is very difficult to come by for the disabled. Not only are they the last
to be considered for any position, but commuting between work and home is also extremely
arduous. “That’s why we’re promoting micro-entrepreneurship and giving out loans,
so the disabled can set up their own businesses in their own homes,” she says.
The organizations also stress a principle close to Carmen’s heart: the virtue of
volunteer work. “I am the beneficiary of other people’s goodwill,” she underscores.
“If not for a volunteer who brought me to the National Orthopaedic Hospital, I would
not have met Sister Valeriana Baerts….No matter who you are, if you don’t know how
to share, you’ll get nowhere.” |
