Grade 12 Closing Ceremonies Speech of Mr. Karl Kendrick Chua, XS '96

Grade 12 Closing Ceremonies Speech of Mr. Karl Kendrick Chua, XS '96

Below is his speech:

Let your light shine, like the stars forever, with your life and work

Xavier Nuvali High School batch 2022 graduation, March 27, 2022

Thank you very much, Raissa, for introducing me. I will always remember this special chance of meeting a very inspiring Xaverian.

Xavier School President Fr. Aristotle Dy, Principal Arlene Choo, Assistant Principal Elsa Magtibay and Frederick Perez, Campus Minister Fr. Mike Pineda, teachers, parents, and distinguished students, good afternoon.

I am very pleased to see so many graduating students gathered under one roof. Just a few months ago, this would not be feasible. Your batch is very unique because of the past two years that you spent studying online.

My son, Keid Ashby, just finished grade 1 in Xavier. He also spent his first two years as a Xaverian studying online, except for one week in a pilot face-to-face class. His one week in the classroom, meeting new friends and playing with them, was one of the best things that happened to him during the pandemic.

Being grateful

Life, as we know it, was flipped the past two years. We normally express our affection by sharing our presence with those we hold dear. Before vaccination became widespread, it was an act of love and concern to keep our distance.

The past two years was marked by massive losses. Covid-19 and the quarantines took away lives and livelihoods. It separated close friends and families. The typhoons and floodings devastated our people further. The ones who have suffered the most are those who have the least.

These extraordinary times have demanded extraordinary effort, extraordinary concern, and extraordinary love from each of us. We did not plan to be, or even imagine, where we are today. Yet, even in these difficult times, there is still much to be grateful for.

My Xavier education

My 13 years of Xavier education was the best gift my parents gave me. When my father, Arsenio Chua, got married in 1976, he only had 6,000 pesos of savings. He had to work very hard to pay for my tuition, which in 1983, the year I entered kinder, amounted to 4,000 pesos per semester—quite a big amount considering that the daily minimum wage was 19 pesos per day. To pay for our education, my father was a traveling salesman who sold almost anything in demand.

My parents worked very hard to send me and my brother to Xavier because they wanted the best for us. For many Filipinos, who have no power, no money, or no influence, a good education is the only way to realize their dreams. So aside from celebrating your personal accomplishments, today is also a day to sincerely thank your parents, who worked very hard to send you to one of the best schools in the country.

An unequal world

As you leave Xavier’s walls, enter college, and start working years later, you will see more and more an unequal world. There is a wide gap between the haves and have nots, the skilled and unskilled, and the educated and uneducated.

Today, one in three mothers is malnourished. They give birth to malnourished children, who given their lower cognitive skills, cannot finish school, and thus get stuck in low-paying jobs, perpetuating a vicious cycle that is passed on to their children and grandchildren. The poor are poor because they lacked the opportunity to succeed.

Sadly, the pandemic has exacerbated these inequalities. There are those who have the means to study online, those who have cars to bring them safely to supermarkets and workplaces, and those who can afford better healthcare.

The majority of Filipinos, however, suffered greatly during the pandemic. Most children have seen deep setbacks in their education for lack of tablets and internet. At the start of the pandemic, many could not go to work or buy food since public transport was restricted. Many also could not set foot in a hospital for lack of money. 

In Xavier Nuvali, we are very blessed to see the first batch of the Fr. Zuluaga scholars graduate—13 of you today. Together with the school administration and the students, I am very grateful to all the benefactors who so generously supported more than a hundred scholars, especially during this pandemic.

While we are now on the path to recovery, the past two years revealed several weaknesses in our socio-economic foundations.

In truth, we cannot create a prosperous society if there is huge inequality in the country. While we cannot control outcomes, that is who becomes successful and who does not, we can work together to give every Filipino an equal opportunity to succeed.

The changing world

Addressing inequality has become even more challenging given technological advancements, climate change, and global conflicts.

The world is rapidly changing by the day. New technology is benefiting many of us who have the skills but at the same time, it has become a threat to the livelihoods of those without skills.

Natural calamities have grown more frequent at increasing intensities. For instance, the once-in-a-century super typhoon has now become a once-in-a-decade, and the once-in-a-decade strong typhoon has now become once in a few years. Typhoon Odette, just eight years after Typhoon Yolanda, is a reminder of how vulnerable our country has become.

We are also bystanders in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, which has raised food and oil prices significantly, adversely affecting the lives of our countrymen.

Magis and our response

In the face of widespread hardship today, we ask ourselves, “what can I do more?” “What does having a Xavier education call us to do?

For me, it was joining the government and taking on even more challenges during the Covid-19 pandemic. It was not easy at all, but my Xavier formation made it all possible. 

There are three lessons I learned from my Jesuit education that helped me, and I hope they too will become a part of your life.

The first is to trust in God fully—that he has a better plan for you. In truth, the best things in my life are all unplanned, they are all gifts from God.

The second is to find God in all things, even in life’s hardship and in my case, my work in government.

The third is, following the school’s motto, Luceat Lux, is to let your light shine, like the stars forever, with your life and work.

My work in government

In June 2016, my life changed suddenly when I was called to join the government as an Undersecretary in the Department of Finance (DOF). At that time, I was working in the World Bank and after 12 years, I was offered a tenure, which means my job was secured.

Being in development work, I knew that one day, I would have to work in government if I were to truly understand and help address the country’s problems. One cannot be in development work and just give advice. But I did not expect it would be that soon, when my family had just started to settle down with a baby.

My work in the World Bank was a satisfying one so I was shocked when Secretary Dominguez asked me to join the DOF.

Joining the government was the hardest decision in my life. Apart from the pay cut and losing my hard-earned tenure, I would exert a lot of effort and get stressed out yet people will still complain—a thankless job. But I trusted in God. My friends, even those I have not seen or talked to for a long time, came to help me discern.

By the way, discernment is not between a good and a bad, but rather two goods. In my case, working in World Bank and being able to provide well for my family versus working in government and providing much less, especially family time, which is so precious.

After a week of feeling a mix of consolation and desolation, I chose to join the government.

I trusted in God because the best things in my entire life are those that I did not plan for—like becoming an economist, like joining the World Bank, like meeting my future wife Alanna, and having Keid Ashby, whose cuteness has the power to erase my work stress, except during a tantrum, which tends to worsen it. Keid Ashby is

my blue flame. He keeps me going in government work.

In truth, the best things in my life are all gifts from God that appear at the most unexpected time. I trusted in God who always has a far better plan for me, even better than any preparation that I can ever do. That is why I joined the government.

In government, my team and I faced seemingly insurmountable challenges, but with much hard work, a great team, and a lot of prayers, we achieved a lot.

In the DOF, I was tasked to lead the tax reform to fund massive infrastructure projects and better social services for the people. We also pushed game-changing reforms, such as the rice tariffication law, to break the monopoly of vested interests so that we can lower food prices, create more and better jobs, and improve the quality of life.

By January 2020, we had seen major improvements in the lives of the people. The country achieved its lowest ever poverty rate, unemployment rate, and underemployment rate. Our economy was fast approaching upper-middle income country status where Thailand and Malaysia are today, and we had achieved our goal of lifting six million Filipinos out of poverty as early as 2018, or four years ahead of our 2022 target.

Then Covid-19 hit us. In April 2020, my life changed even much more when at the height of the enhanced community quarantine (ECQ), the president appointed me as Acting Secretary of the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA). Managing the economy during our country’s worst crisis is my life’s greatest

challenge.

What started as a temporary acting job became a permanent job. During the early months of the pandemic, I faced both economic and moral questions, such as whose life is more important? Those suffering from Covid-19 or those suffering from hunger and other sicknesses? The decision to open the economy was the hardest one to make. More desolation than consolation marked the past 23 months.

The first year of the pandemic wiped out some 41.4 trillion pesos in terms of present and future costs to society. The lack of face-to-face schooling in the past two years has cost the children some 22 trillion pesos worth of future productivity given the lower quality of education compared to pre-Covid-19. Moreover, children’s social and mental well-being are also badly affected and this is also likely to affect their future productivity.

With much effort, we have made significant progress in our fight against Covid-19. Today, over 65 million Filipinos have been fully vaccinated and some 10 million children have been vaccinated. Since March 15, 2022, 70% of the economy has already shifted to Alert Level 1, where most capacity and travel restrictions have been lifted. We are now on track to recover to the pre-pandemic level within 2022.

However, we cannot reap the full benefit of the recovery if the majority of schools are still closed for face-to-face learning. That is why I have been working hard to have all schools safely open. This is not without great difficulty and opposition. I am who I am today because of my education. One of Keid Ashby’s happiest moment during the pandemic was being physically present in school. Many of you have formed the best memories of your lives in school.

Joining the government was one of the hardest decisions in my life. It has been a great experience of ups and downs, but I hope that it will one day make a difference in the life of Keid Ashby, his classmates, and his generation—that they can all reach their star one day, because we did the right thing today and paved for them a future far better than ours.

In fact, everyone should try working in government. It gives you the right to complain more. I hope that during or after college, or when you have become a professional, decades later, you would consider joining the government even for a couple of years, or even as an intern for a month, so you can directly contribute solutions and implement your own ideas for our country’s development, rather than just complain.

Man in the arena

Let me end with a quote from the speech of former US President Theodore Roosevelt, “Citizenship in a Republic” given at the Sorbonne in Paris on April 23, 1910.

I hope many of you will be inspired by this to do more despite your own personal weaknesses.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood;

who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming;

but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause;

who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly,

so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

Closing

The challenges ahead remain long and tough. For this reason, I invite everyone to take the summer break to rest and recharge, and also to reflect on how we can serve our country better, for our true calling is what we can do more: more for our personal growth, more for our future, and more for those who have the least.

To close, let me congratulate the batch of 2022 for achieving this major milestone. May the future be as bright as the star you have nourished all these years in Xavier School.

Thank you very much and keep safe.