Philippines: Claretian “PHILANTROPHIC DEVELOPMENT OFFICE” CMS-PDO

Decreasing number of religious vocation and financial crisis are global phenomena that have been affecting religious congregations around the globe. Yet, enormous problems of poverty, out of school children and youth, domestic violence and abuse, broken homes, spiritual disintegration and environmental degradation are continue to rise and leave us insufficient resources to respond to all needs. The harvest is plentiful and the workers are few with limited financial assistance. Cognizant with these anomalies of our society and our congregation of course, the Province of East Asia through the Philippines Dependent Delegation, The Philanthropic development Office was set up to support our mission advocacies in East Asia. The CMS-PDO is an office that channels all the funding needs from our generous donors; organizations or groups that work for humanitarian cause or individuals who would like to collaborate in our missions through material and spiritual support to those who are in need. After lots of works and trainings, on March 10, 2018, we officially inaugurated the CMS-PDO office in our Giner Building which was used years ago as classroom for poor children from our neighborhoods. Our priest presider was Fr. Alberto S. Poblete, OFMCap, a director of Our Lady of Lourdes PDO, belongs to OFMCap Philippines. Our faithful and generous benefactors were present for the event and contributed some amount as a starting point of supporting the different advocacies, while others brought food for our afternoon snacks, flowers for decoration and some home made products that offered to support our mission one percentage of their incomes.

The CMS-PDO has 8 ambassadors, a secretary and a directress; the 8 ambassadors are the one (sisters, for now) to carry out the reports on the activities of the mission advocacies such as Evangelization and Catechetical Ministry (Theresia Alvonsa Almida Juita), Education and Scholarship (Emanuela Ratna Kartika Dewi Amunnutur), Human Resource and Development (Marita Jovellanos), Health Care for the sisters and the poor (Marissa Amog), Vocation and Formation (Anastasia Wio), Pastoral and Social Ministries (Maria Selfia Besi ) and Spiritual and Human Development of the Sisters (Teresita Buen). The present CMS-PDO Director is Ryzalin Solitario with a lay collaborator as our staff and secretary, Madam Alma Solitario Paderes. We thank God for his unending blessings through so many people who have been part of our missionary journey in Asia, and for the opportunity to get to know about the PDOs in the Philippines through a Carmelite Missionary Sister who helped us to engage into this project and now on its way of running the PDO system in our province. Greetings from East Asia, we continue to unite in love and prayer.

By T. Alvonsa Almida J. (Helmy)