Ray Dean Salvosa - Managing Director of Consuelo Foundation

He could have pulled the trigger on them but he would not be any different from those child criminals who killed his brother.

Instead, Ray Salvosa utilized much of his time and resources to change the way society thinks about juvenile delinquents.  Ray has been appointed to serve as a member of the Juvenile Justice & Welfare Council which has been tasked to oversee the implementation of the Juvenile Justice & Child Welfare Act (RA9344) of 2006.

He has lectured extensively on juvenile justice, child abuse issues, restorative justice and community policing in varous conferences and symposiums in the Philippines as well as in international conferences in Japan, the United States, Ireland, Canada, Estonia, Germany, Finland, Scotland and India.  In November 2004, he was invited by UNICEF New York to participate in a forum to develop juvenile justice indicators.

This, what we could consider passion of his, stemmed from that very traumatic and harrowing experience, which could otherwise have been an issue of vengeance, but instead had become a mission for the greater good.

Read more on Ray Dean Savlosa, managing director for Philippine operations of Consuelo Zobel Alger Foundation, and his story on youth justice, family, finding one’s purpose, and doing the right thing.

Click here for the interview audio.

Jay-R Patron:  Will you telll us what Consuelo Foundation is?  What are its mission, vision andvalues?

Ray Salvosa:  Essentially, Counsuelo Foundation is an American registered foundation established by Consuelo zobel Alger who is a Filipina.  She belongs to the Ayala clan, one of the most reputable families, the oldest families in the Philippines.  She established this foundation in her name, endowed it with everything she owned and it’s main purpose really is to help children, women and families at risk.  The mission is focused on children.  It is simply to improve the quality of their life.  We do that in the areas of child abuse, treatment and prevention, children in jail, helping out-of-school-youth, and also working with their families, because you cannot really address the needs of children without addressing the needs of their families. 

Jay-R Patron:  What do you do as managing director?

Ray Salvosa:    My task is to oversee the operations of the Philippine branch and to implement the mandates of our Board in terms of how the mission of Consuelo is going to be carried out.  So in a sense I am the gatekeeper and administrator of the programs.  We oversee about anywhere from 50 to 60 programs a year.  Overall, we have provided support and co-developed programs for about close to over a hundred non-government organizations.  We do not implement the projects ourselves because if we did that it would be very expensive and we would nto be as effective.  What we have done is identify key parties representing an organization that is already established and through a series of preparatory and technical assistance that we provide.  What we do is these partners, provide them training, bring them up to standards.  It takes about one to two years to join Consuelo’s partner network.  Once you pass what we call our service delivery and organizational standards, meaning to say, you have been given some kind of good housekeeping seal of approval because we have checked the way you handle your finances, checked the way you administer your organization,we have checked on the qualifications of your people, we have checked your risk management, your financial policies, everything that in effect qualifies you to be an implementing partner of Consuelo.  The bottom line is that we have brought you to a certain level of standard where have the guarantee that the money we provide for you to implement the program will nto be wasted.  So working with through this partnership model has made us I think more effective because we are dealing with organizations who are already in the field, who know the culture, who understand the language, who know the nuances of the area where they operate.  What we do is we co-develop the program with them, we provide the techincal assistance that enable them to have the capacity to implement the programs, and to provide better services to the populations that we have designated. 

Jay-R Patron:  Let’s get a little bit in to the specifics.  What is a normal day to you like beign managing director?

Ray Salvosa:  A normal day would be coming to the office and beign available on my cellphone to any and all programatic concerns of our partners and the organization.  So when I come here, you notice this desk is full of paper work.  An average day is reviewing or looking at issues impacting on the kind of programs that we do, making the required decisions and looking at the financial outlays.  That’s the day to day.  Then there are the program visits or receiving the executive directors of many of our programs where we have discussions on issues.  Certain parts of the day are involved in going to congress or doing advocacy work pushing for certain pieces of legislation that we feel is needed to improve the capacities and lives of many of the affected populations that we deal with.  It’s hard to define.  When you come right down to it, my work is somewhat, even though it sounds complicated, it’s really made easy by the fact that I have a very competent staff.  I have about 33 people in this organization.  At least half of them are program specialists and program officers, and each one of them handles 10 to 15 of these organizations.  They are the ones who actually do the monitoring, evaluation, provide the requirements for the technical assistance that we need.  So the nitty gritty done by my program staff.  And what I get here are simply issues that cannot be resolved at their level that needs to be solved at a higher level.  So a lot of decisions eventually end up here.  But my program staff are very competent in their field.  What really reaches me are sometimes just ministerial, an increase in the budget of an organization mainly because there is a need to address certain issues that were not in the original design of the program, so it needs an additional budget allocation.  Things like that go to me.  I come up with certain, for example, the advocacy for juvenile justice was my brainchild.  I was the one who pushed for the drafting of a bill and made juvenile jsutice a major project of the organization, and that included not only implementing programs directly but also advocating for changes in social policy and in effect, impacting on the thinking of the larger community and how they look at children in conflict with the law.  I felt part of our job was to change society’s way of looking at this children because they are nto criminals, they are just children who made a mistake.  But the system is reacting in such a way that it was makign them worse.  It was criminalizing them.  It was putting them in jails indefinitely, mixed with adult prisoners, and part of my job is to identify issues like that and bring it to the attention of our board and make sure that it is addressed.  There are times we go outside the parameters of what the original mission is mainly because if we look at our job as simply to help the beneficiary, the target clientelle directly, and we do not address the outside issues that impact, nothing changes.  And so what I feel is my bigger role is to help identify where, we don’t just address the problem on the level of the children or the family but we address the societal issues that impact.  To translate in, like a play on words, our original mission was really to help children in specially difficult circusmtances.  But I always include an amendment to that by saying that part of our job is also to change those circumstances that make it specially difficult for children and their families.  So that is why we are not only helping children who have been abused, by providing therapy for them, by providing the means for them to get that therapy in a safe, residential program where they have continuing education and counseling.  But also to organize and provide training for police officers and social workers and prosecutors, on how to handle child abuse cases.  There’s always the bigger picture.  The programs address these issues directly.  I tend to see part of my role as addressing the bigger issues where we need to change the way things are done—by so  society, by government agencies, by the state if necessary—and a big part of that is supporting legislation.  We co-wrote the bill on juvenile justice and delinquency prevention.  It took us nine years but we finally got that passed into law.  We even produced a documentary that showed  the impact of what the present system is doing in destroying the lives of a whole generation of children who simply made a mistake and then ended up in jail for years until they finally get destroyed by the system.  We, I think, played a major role in changing that. 

Jay-R Patron: How long have you been with Consuelo and how did you get in to this position?

Ray Salvosa:  Consuelo was not established until 1990 but I was part of the original group that set up the first program in Baguio even before there was a Consuelo Foundation, but Consuelo herself started sending money to establish a street children program in Baguio and I was one of the first Board members and eventually ended up becoming president and running that organization.  That was really the precursor to Consuelo Foundation.  Consuelo wanted to help street children in Baguio when I was living in Baguio at the time.  So we established Child and Family Service and Consuelo channeled the money to that.  In 1990 she formed, she organized Consuelo Foundation and I ended up eventually becoming the managing director mainly because of the work we started with the very first Consuelo project even before there was a Consuelo Foundation.  I was, at the time, a volunteer because my full-time job was I was a professor of political science and an administrator for a college in Baguio.  I have since left academe and done social work full time. 
It involved a major change of career—from a professor of political science to becoming a social worker, because that’s in a sense what it is, although I have had no training formally as a social worker and if somebody told me that I would end up doing this kind of work, I would have told them they were crazy.  But life does that.

Jay-R Patron:  You’re well-traveled, well-educated, what is it about the Philippines that you think is so special that you want to go back to this country, even though you’ve lived months…?

Ray Salvosa:  I was away 15 years.  That’s a question that I never expected to be asked.  You are what you are.  I was born a Filipino, raised as one, and even though my children, my three sons, were born in the US, two of them elected Philippine citizenship, even though they could have been.  My wife is a US citizen.  One of my sons served in the US army in Iraq.
It’s a matter of being… I really don’t know how to answer that question because I never expected it to be asked.  I was born a Filipino, I’ve always been Filipino.  Even though I’ve spent almost 15 years in the United States, I never gave up my citizenship.  My wife did.  My wife is a US citizen.  I never changed.  I always knew I was going to come back.  Except those were the martial law years.  I could not come back and live under Marcos.  But as soon as Marcos was kicked out, I told my wife and my kids, “We’re going home?”  After 1986 when Marcos was kicked out, we were here.  We liquidated everything and we were back here by November 1986, the same year Marcos left and I’ve stayed on ever since.  I’m just a Filipino.  There is no big deal about it.  It’s a no-brainer. 

Jay-R Patron:  Let’s talk about your Outstanding Citizen Award in Baguio. 

Ray Salvosa:  It’s a recognition for… awards are awards.  I appreciated this one because it put a value on the work I did with the community. 

Jay-r Patron:  I was reading through your bio and I’ve noticed a lot of accolades and awards honored in to you.  What do you think has given you the most fulfillment out of all those plaques? 

Ray Salvosa:  I have those plaques there because I don’t know where to put them.  Honestly, it’s not the awards or the work.  It’s having three sons and seeing my sons turn out to be good, decent young men.  The story is not yet finished.  My eldest son is 27.  He works for a call center.  He graduated from La Salle.  My second son served in the US Army, two years in Iraq.  My third son is an Ateneo law student.
They are nice, young, decent men and I am most proud of that, to me, my greatest accomplishment.  In terms of my professional career, just looking at the impact that these programs… it was the same way when I was teaching.  When someone comes to me years later and says, “Sir, you were my professor at UP or UC.  I just want you to know how much I appreciate…”  Sa akin (to me), that’s the best… to have impact on the mind of a young person, to have altered a life for the better.  In effect, while I am not directly involved in the nitty gritty of the programs, passing that Juvenile Justice bill, conceptualizing that I mean, had a great impact.  Coming up with this film (Bunso) and the way it changed attitudes, although this was a collective effort.  But things like that.  Occasionally seeing a life saved or changed is I think the best… you don’t need  to see in a plaque or…

Jay-R Patron:  What is it about juvenile justice and childwelfare that you are in to?  Why children?

Ray Salvosa:  Maybe it was sort of an accident.  My brother was murdered.  My youngerst brother was murdered in 1990 by seven people, two of them were teenagers. 

Jay-R Patron:  How old was he?

Ray Salvosa:  My youngest brother was 41.  he had five children.  That consumed really a big part of my life.  That was a life changing event.  Police was totally ineffective in the way they handled the case, and I swore I wouldn’t rest until we got these killers.  So I organized my own vigilante group in 1990 and we went after them and we got them.  We found my brother’s killers, we were able to arrest them.  We turned them over to the law.  They were tried and all sentenced to life in prison after we ascertained they were the ones.  100 percent they were the ones.  It’s a long story but I saw there was, when I looked at these people who did that, when you look at their lives they are born in poverty, dysfunctional family, they were on the streets by the time they were five or six years old, no meaningful adults in their lives, they were surviving from one foster family or caregiver to another.  Walang focus.  They were constantly hungry, begging, stealing to be able to feed themselves.  It does not justify it but that’s the reality of poverty, that’s the violence of poverty.  And by the time they grew up, somewhere along the line their paths crossed with my brother’s and my brother was dead.  And I just thought, what if someone had intervened in the lives of these young men, someone took charge of their lives, took care of them, give them the values they should have had—the same way I raised my children—would my brother be alive today?  And that’s what I saw in the juvenile justice system.  I saw a whole generation of children, as young as 9, being arrested, thrown in jail, mixed with adults, being abused in jail—maybe because they committed a mistake, maybe because they were poor, maybe because they didn’t know any better.  When you’re hungry you’re going to eat, you’re going to need to eat.  And if you have to steal to be able to do that, you’ll do it.  The ends justify the means.  No one told them it was wrong to steal.  If someone had intervened in the lives of these two young men, especially, these two very young guys who were involved in my brother’s murder, my brother may well be alive.  And so my intervention in that area.  That’s why I was the one who put juvenile justice on the agenda of Consuelo Foundation.  At that time it wasn’t.  And I said if I am going to join, juvenile justice would have to be one of the programs we’ll do because I wanted to address the plight of many of these kids.  I think we have been somewhat successful.  We’re no where near where we should be but I think we have taken a major first step.  And part of that is a personal reason, you do it not so much to really help others.  I did it for a personal reason, partly to give meaning to my brother’s death, that something good would come out of it.  I could have just had those guys salvaged.  I had the power at that time.  I could do it.  I had them.  I was the one who turned them over to the police.  We didn’t have to, but we did.  But that’s also what I saw when we looked at… after I talked to them.  I talked to each one of them and I saw what you were dealing with.  It’s “There but for the grace of God go I”.  Had I been born in the same situation would I be where I am today or would I be out there in the streets committing murder, theft, robbery?  So whatever I do in a sense, I did for a selfish reason.  I did it to give meaning to my brother’s death, but also to ensure that my own kids will be safe.  For every child we turn away from a life of crime, we could save a daughter from being raped, another son or brother from being murdered, another family from being robbed, another life from being destroyed.  We cannot begin to count, because if you look at the continuum, a child who turns bad or who commits a mistake and he’s put to jail with no counseling—you’ve seen our jails.  If you see this film you will be shocked.  He probably commit anywhere between one to 50 crimes by the time he’s 30—cellphone snatching, drug pushing, robbery, burglary, rape, murder.  It doesn’t stop until… and you can turn.  Majority of these kids are really not bad.  If you grew up in a good family, you are what you are mainly because your family raised you, your parents raised your life.  And when I was teaching, I thought I was doing that.  I thought I was teaching kids—because I was teaching political philosophy—it’s the same thing here.  I’m still teaching but in a different subject, a different note.  Like I said, most of the time you really end up… in the end, your worse fear is that it becomes just a job.  This becomes just a job where I go in 8 to 5.  I bring nothing else but then I collect my salary every 15 days. 

Jay-R Patron:  There’s no meaning to… there’s no greater meaning to what you do.

Ray Salvosa:  No.  It doesn’t mean that it’s bad.  It just means… I still provide for my family.  It’s an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay.  The job, and I’m grateful for it and it gives me the opportunity to really make a difference.  One of the reasons—I’m particularly proud of that award, the Outstanding Citizen.  I did a police project in Baguio, nationally, the community policing project.  That had quite an impact also.  That saved a few lives.  It made the police far more efficient than they would have been.  Because I saw the problem when my brother was murdered.  Police were totally incompetent, partly because this was right after martial law and their training as police officers were not there.  They were trained as military support for the Marcos regime.  They worked from a police function, which was “To serve and protect” to a military function which was “Search and destroy”.  And you learn things about yourself when these things happen.  Like everything that has happened, you learn from it.  One of the things I learned from my brother’s murder was the fact… I was castigated by many of my friends and relatives when they found out that I was able to catch my brother’s killers but that I turned them over to the police.  They all answered me, “Puta ragis ka, bakit di mo pina-salvage (why didn’t you have them salvaged)?  Kung ako yan patay na yang mga yan (If I  were you, I would have had them killed).  To tell you the truth, that was my original intent except you find out, madali sabihin (it’s easy to say).  When these guys were brought to me by my people, “Sir, yayariin na namin ‘to (we’ll rub them out).”  I said, “Wait, I know those were my original orders but bring them back to me.  I want to make sure we have the right guys.”  I talked to each one and I got the confession without torturing.  It’s so easy, all you have to do is to make them believe that one of them talked already.  So they have their own versions.  No one admitted who did the stabbing, eventually the fingers pointed to two people in the gang who did the actual stabbing.  My brother was stabbed fourteen times.  And so there came a time when I had to make a decision—turn them over or finish them off.  And that’s when everything that you are, everything that made you what you are—your parents—everything you learned in school, everything you learned as a boy scout, everything comes together and becomes your moment of truth.  Everything you learned in church—and I’m not that deeply religious person—I found out then that this is what separates us from them… that I could not kill with impunity and in the end, even if I had them killed, if it would have brought my brother back I would have done it.  But my brother remains dead, so killing them would serve no useful purpose.  Plus, yung values ko din (my values also).  I was teaching political philosphy for many years and I never believed in the death penalty, although in this particular one I almost changed my mind.  But that was the final arbiter.  In the end, if you can kill, even for a justifiable reason, are you any different from them?  That’s the issue.  So the police project was born out of that.  That was the reason for that award. 

Jay-r Patron:  And you started this in Baguio, I believe.

Ray Salvosa:  We did it for almost nine years.  And it was brought to the national police.  We still see resemblances—the outposts, the community-oriented policing they call it.  I was being invited by the naitonal police to give them lectures on this, to present.  But in the end it was difficult workign with them because there was no continuity.  The mindset was there.  They would give it lip service but not do the actual.  So it was frustrating.  But in Baguio, because we had more control, we were able to get the police to actually… and to this day it’s there, although they are not doing everything anymore.  And they’re asking me to go back and revive it.  They have community support, they have banks and every rotary clubs supporting them, and the police were made accountable.  It’s a great project, I would do it… and I still believe in it.  It was one of the good outcomes.  Again, why did I do that?  For a selfish reason.  I didn’t do it for altruistic ano, to get an award or anything, but because it was a problem that needed to be addressed and it impacts on my family.  If the police are incompetent, inefficient and corrupt, that means the community is not safe… and my family is part of that community.  In order to make my family safe, I needed to make the community that I live in safe, and hiring security guards to guard my family and my house and everthing.  The security guard in my brother’s building was the mastermind of the caper that caused his death.

Jay-R Patron:  How would you prioritze these four things: family, career, self, country?

Ray Salvosa:  Family, myself, my career, and my country, that’s hard.  You can always say, “I can die for my country” but I probably will not sacrifice my family so they come first, as selfish as that may sound but that’s the reality.  There are certain things I will not do but there are things that I would fight for for my country.  It’s not easy to prioritize.  Let me just say that three out of the four—country, family, career, self—are important mainyl because one’s self is really the career.  I cannot separate the two.  So there’s really three.  One is meant to support the other and they are important at different stages in your life.  To me country is important mainly because, like I said, I was born here, I was raised a Filipino, I value the values of the Filipino, except the distorted practices we have nakakasira talaga (that are damaging).  We have enough good values here.  I’m proud to be a Filipino.  I don’t like our president.  I don’t like what government does 80 percent of the time.  That’s why we try to change it.  That’s why we have elections.

Jay-R Patron:  Throughout your whole professional career, what has been your purpose, your greatest purpose? 

Ray Salvosa:  Frankly, I don’t know how to answer that because, honestly…

Jay-R Patron:  Or is it that in every stage of your life you find different purpose or get to delvier different purposes?

Ray Salvosa:  To me it’s probably because I started out as an educator, it’s to… it’s easy to say and it sounds self-serving but to live as meaningful a life as possible.  But how do you define that?  Those are questions that are not easy to answer.  I’m trying to be very basic.  I find fulfillment in my family.  To me that’s paramount.  I value my family—my wife and my three sons, maybe because I have a direct hand in how my sons turn out.  Let’s say one of my sons becomes a criminal at this point or becomes exactly the opposite of what I raised, those are hard to deal with.  Career-wise it’s the same thing.  I hope I don’t end up doing something I don’t like.  When this job becomes just a routine, that I just mouth what I’m told to say, then I come here spend my eight hours and go home then it’s time to go else where.

Jay-R Patron:  What is your passion?

Ray Salvosa:  A lot.  There are many things.  I’m passionate about the causes I advocate for.  I’m passionate about my family, what I would like to see them go through.  I’m passionate about my movie collection.  I’m passionate about golf.  Bottomline is just to have the kind of life that I would like my sons to have.  I don’t know if I have attained it, because when you look at it, you see that you’ll always want more.  I’m not even talking about money but in terms of more fulfillment, more time to be able to read my books that I have acquired, which half of it I have not read; this movie collection that I value; these documentaries that I really… there does not seem to be enough time.  This weekend I’m going up to Baguio for three days of golf.  That is my passion for the weekend, because I have not played golf for the last six weeks.  I don’t know if that answers your question but some people can come up with some great vision, but me, I just become too practical.  For the moment this is my… after my golfing weekend, because it’s a three-day weekend, next week it’s going to be something else.  The main focus are there, again, family.  The next rally against Gloria I’m definitely going to be there.  The next mass for Cory even though I’m not a great church goer, I will be there.  If there was one woman I believe in in this country, it’s Cory.

Jay-R Patron:  What is your fondest childhood memory?

Ray Salvosa:  There’s so many.  There’s a limit to what you can remember.  But when you remember something… there’s always my tender moment with my father.  There were very many of those.  Days spent with my brother who was murderd.  Many many incidents that I can think of.  I can’t pinpoint to just one.  You can’t live life and categorize everything in to “the one most”.  I can’t do it.  There are several competing moments.  They’re very insightful questions, very difficult to answer.

Jay-R Patron:  What do you think has been your greatest achievement in life?

Ray Salvosa:  I don’t know yet. 

Jay-R Patron:  So far.

Ray Salvosa:  Well, so far… again I would have to say having rasied three very decent young men.  When I die, when you go to the cemetery there are all kinds of tombstones, crosses, all kinds of written… when you look at the newspapers, the obituaries… and you see titles—engineer so and so, general so and so, chairman so and so.  I’ve always said if there was one thign I would like to see on my tombstone, and I don’t have the right to write it, if it could simply say good husband and father, that would be the best accolade ever.  I cannot think of anything btter.

Jay-R Patron:  What was your greatest challenge and how did you overcome it?

Ray Salvosa:  My greatest challenge was my brother’s murder because I could not let it pass.  I could not… my sisters are all devout Christians and they simply said they accept God’s will, pray, ask for forgiveness for the murder, etc.  I remember I picked up the phone and I called my eldest brother and I saidn “Jerry, I cannot let this pass”.  I wanted vengeance, “I’m going to go after these guys.”  And I said, “whatever resources I need, you help me get it.”  Money, guns, whatever.  Getting over that period of hate, vengeance, not having those guys killed.  That was a major accomplishment, although I think I was partly cowardized also because when you get there, that’s the moment of truth.  You find out what makes you different.  Then you get to that point that you can’t do it.  Why?  Because we were not made up that way.  We were not trained that way.  I couldn’t hurt a cat, how could I kill a man?  So that’s probably my greatest accomplishment.  Although to this day I have some regret, occassionally I think about this—life imprisonment in this country means 15 to 30 years.  Those guys have served close to 18 years and they’re up for parole anytime soon.  So they will be out.  And this is where I’m beginning to think I should have had those guys.  I couldn’t do it at the time, moreso, I probably cannot do it now.  And the question, and I have been asked this many times, have I forgiven them?  The answer is very simple, of course not.  I can’t.  They’re alive.  They can thank me for that… that I didn’t have them killed.  I don’t know if that qualifies as greatest accomplishment but getting justice for my brother, at least there was closure.  I think about all the families who has lost loved ones—the Vizcondes—who to this day do not know if… there’s not closure.  In my family’s case, and I’m glad my father and mother were still alive, that I was able to do this.  I brought my brother’s killers to justice.  At least there was some closure.  We got justice.  It doesn’t bring him back.  The pain will always be there.  The wound will always be open but his killers are not free.  They were punished.  To me, that’s it, next to my sons.

Jay-R Patron:  What would you tell young Filipinos, with us being amidst all these problems the our country and the world are facing?

Ray Salvosa:  Being a political scientist by trade, Filipinos have a great tendency to disparage ourselves more than most people and many are very down.  Having studied political development works, the way transitions take place, we could have been better off in many ways but we carry a lot of baggage—our colonial past, our historical past, the damage done to us by 20 years of martial law under Marcos where many of our values were really distorted—where we were made to accept things that are really damaging to the national psyche.  It takes a whole generation to get rid of that.  Go back to 1986.  That was the one big shining moment for the Filipino.  We taught the world something when we all gathered at EDSA and kicked Marcos out, and really ushered a decade of democracy here.  Even the world acknowledged that we started that movement.  So there are some things to be proud of, and that we can bring back those glory days if we can simply follow a very simple motto, “Do the right thing”.

Jay-R Patron:  But that could be very subjective.

Ray Salvosa:  Of course.  But when you say the right thing, what is the right thing?  You pay the right taxes, you don’t lie, cheat or steal, you treat everybody fairly, you abide by the golden rule.  Do the right thing, it’s up to you how to define that.  If you can distort it then that’s your problem.  But msot of us know what it means.  You don’t have to be a religious church goer to understand.

Jay-R Patron:  What would you tell your children?

Ray Salvosa:  I told them the same thing, do the right thing. 

Jay-R Patron:  Why is it important to give back?

Ray Salvosa:  You can pay it forward, you don’t have to pay back.  That’s a value I think that a lot of people probably subscribe to.  You get a benefit when something good happens to you, you share.  As a Filipino that’s very much a part of our culture.  When we eat and a total stranger walks by, “Sir, kain tayo (Let’s eat).”  We give alms to the poor.  We donate to charity.  We try to do some good any way we can.  The important thing is to figure out wh you do it.  If you do  it because you think you’re going to heaven then I think you’re doing it for the wrong reason.  But I would rather everybody gives back or pays it forward rather than not, because a culture of selfishness is not the kind of society you want to live in.  There’s a saying, “to whom much is given, much is expected.” 

Jay-R Patron:  If there was one message from this whole conversation that you would like to tell our readers, what would that message be?

Ray Salvosa:  Do the right thing… from throwing your garbage properly to greeting your friend, or your fellow man, or your wife, or your children, properly. 

Ray Salvosa:  This year is the 20th anniversary of the foundation and we have made some preparations to commemorate the event.  It’s an important event because the foundation was established because of one woman’s generosity and vision, and we would like to honor that.  What she has set up in terms of the system that she put in, the generous endowment that she provided to the foundation, will enable the foundation to operate and do good work almost forever.  A lot of people were involved in helping her do this and we want to honor those people.  And a lot of people were helped, a lot of young children especially were helped by the work that the foundation has done in the last 20 years.  I hope this people give back, not to the foundation, but to others who need help. I hope they pay it forward. 

Jay-R Patron:  That’s it.  Thank you.