CITY OF SAN FERNANDO, Philippines—Twist of fate.
The cliché isn’t exactly the fairytale storyline that a San Francisco-based philanthropist tries to live as he sustains the scholarship and feeding program in the city’s Pampanga National High School (PNHS) launched some eight years ago.
“We’ve always known one of our graduates, Rene Medina, to have come from a very poor farming family in Arayat,” said Imelda Macaspac, PNHS principal and administrator of the program under the Rene and Mila Medina Foundation, to FilAm Star.
“We’ve always known that he became very successful as an entrepreneur in the United States, and that he wanted to share his blessings. But it was only when he launched the program here at PNHS that we began to understand a nobler, more complex objective,” Macaspac said.
That mission transcends the usual yardstick of philanthropy – helping those in need. Rene, who immigrated to the US in the early ‘70s with barely a hundred dollars in his pocket and a small suitcase of worn-out clothes, thinks success first starts as a state of mind. This means wanting to be an achiever, and actually being driven by that desire.
He is living proof of that, having founded the San Francisco-based Lucky Group of Companies, of which Lucky Chances Casino (first and only Filipino-owned and operated gaming establishment in the US) is part. He has since passed on to his sons – Rommel, Remil, Ruell – ownership and day-to-day operations of the conglomerate.
Macaspac explains: “At the back of his mind, Rene Medina wants a few of his present scholars to be like him, or even like the late former president, Diosdado Macapagal, who also graduated from this school. Rene wanted his scholars to realize that with some help, there is no dream much too big to achieve.”
Building PNHS infrastructure
Unknowingly or not, Rene began providing that help when he took note of a letter from PNHS in 2003, asking for his financial support in rehabilitating the school’s infrastructure.
“The main hall, which serves as auditorium, was dilapidated, along with the other structures that had been repaired in the ‘90s with limited resources, following the destruction wrought by the Mt. Pinatubo eruption,” narrated Macaspac to FilAm Star.
Having learned of PNHS’s state of disrepair, Rene was quick to mobilize resources in Pampanga, all geared toward giving his alma mater a total facelift. From the hall, the massive reconstruction and rehabilitation work spread throughout the campus, giving rise to 32 well-appointed classrooms, functional multi-purpose buildings, a gymnasium and sports center, a well-equipped Home Economics laboratory, an Agricultural Learning facility, as well as landscaped school grounds.
Later, a Pampanga newspaper quoted Medina as saying, “How can students learn and take their studies seriously without the proper environment and facilities?”
Food for mind, body, soul
Around the time that reconstruction work was in progress at PNHS, Rene and his wife, Mila, established the Rene and Mila Medina Foundation in the Bay Area town of Colma, home of Lucky Chances Casino. The foundation today continues to be the wellspring of assistance – and of hope – for countless charities, as well as for socio-civic, economic, and religious projects in and outside of the Bay Area (California), the United States, and the Philippines.
Among the early projects of the foundation was the renovation and rehabilitation of about 10 churches around Rene’s home province of Pampanga. This ran in tandem with the improvement of a Bay Area church (San Bruno Church) and the renovation of some of the facilities of a parish-based school in San Francisco (Mission Dolores School).
Yet the scholarship and feeding program at PNHS remains closest to Rene’s heart, and where a sizeable part of the foundation’s resources is channeled. In $2008, instead of a yearly endowment, Rene put up a five-year, PhP25-million (around $600K) scholarship fund to finance the feeding program and the schooling, in both high school and college, of deserving but poor students and alumni of PNHS.
Academic achievers
“The feeding program is particularly unique, as it also dispenses of a transportation allowance for the kids,” Macaspac told FilAm Star. “Rene was very concerned that there are very smart students who cannot go to school regularly because they either have no transportation money or food for lunch, or both.”
The foundation’s feeding committee today serves about 300 students daily.
In its totality, the Rene and Mila Medina Foundation has supported, or continues to support, 204 students at PNHS and 75 college scholars who are enrolled in major colleges and universities of their choice in the Philippines.
Of these college scholars, Macaspac is particularly excited about the future of 11 young men and women who are on the cusp of acquiring their bachelor’s degree.
“These are the country’s future, topnotch nurses, restaurateurs, IT specialists, educators, economists, businessmen,” Macaspac enthused. “I’m sure one of them can become another Rene Medina.”