The Family Life Education (FLE) Certificate Program of UA&P has a new home and a heightened sense of mission to protect the family.
In the third session of “Usapang Alumni” initiated by the Office of Alumni Affairs on May 28, Mr. Daniel Rodrigo D. Reyes, CRC President and UA&P VP for Development, informed the 75 FLE graduates and faculty members present in the virtual get-together regarding the Management Committee’s decision to place FLE under the School of Education and Human Development (SED).
“FLE fits very well into the portfolio of programs of SED. SED has a program on early childhood development, human capital development, and values education. FLE completes the portfolio, with SED now having what I call ‘a complete program from womb to tomb.’ The move is actually a leapfrog toward a much richer FLE and even opens doors to a master’s degree program in that area.”
FLE is the flagship program of the Institute for Marriage and Family Development (IMFD), which was initially under the aegis of the Center for Research and Communication. The program was created in 2018 in order to help educators, academics, parents, corporate and development leaders in understanding and communicating family life in different contexts through the development of effective pedagogy. For 20 consecutive Saturdays, participants cover five foundational modules and seven professional-technical modules. Some of the topics discussed are family law and public policy, family dynamics, parent education and family counseling, and family livelihood and resource management. The project team was previously composed of Dr. Severina Villegas, Dr. Socorro Bautista, and Dr. Antonio Torralba.
In just two years since its inception in 2018, the FLE program has produced a total of 233 graduates, who are committed to helping foster, preserve, and nurture family life through private initiatives and special projects.
Hence, Mr. Reyes adds, “This very get-together is a platform through which we can help you with your advocacies. We can use these get-togethers to intubate or test your ideas, to help you bring them to reality.”
And in this time of the pandemic, nothing is more helpful than having projects or creating an environment that, in the words of UA&P co-founder Dr. Bernardo Villegas, “can offer every person access to a dignified existence while protecting and regenerating the natural world.”
In his message to the FLE alumni, Dr. Villegas further exhorted them to respond to the appeal of His Holiness Pope Francis to treat each one as a brother.
“A lot of the things that prevailed before the pandemic will have to disappear: the lack of concern for the poorest of the poor by those who are well to do, our lack of the sense of the common good. This is where I think we have to use the family as an instrument to educate Filipino citizens about what it means to contribute to the common good… Remember that it is a juridical or social order that enables every single member of society to attain his or her fullest integral development.”
On the same note, Dr. Roque L. Caraballo, one of the faculty members of FLE, commented, “Marriage and the family is so vital for all of us, for each person. And coincidentally, Pope Francis launched the Amoris Laetitia Family Year, which started on March 19 of this year and will end on June 26 of next year…. Pope Francis said, ‘Let us support the family. Let us defend it from all that would compromise its beauty. Let’s approach this mystery of love, which is the family, with wonder, discretion and tenderness and let us commit ourselves to safeguarding its precious and delicate bonds…’ We need these bonds to live and to live well and to make humanity more fraternal. Here the Pope is talking about the basic message of the gospel, which has to reach the family and that is love… Love everyone, even people we don’t know and if we take the words of our Lord clearly, He says: love even your enemy.”
The FLE alumni were formally inducted into the alumni family by Mr. Kritzman G. Caballero, president of the UA&P Dragons Alumni Association. Also present in the get-together to share their messages with the alumni were UA&P President Dr. Winston Conrad B. Padojinog, University Registrar and FLE faculty member Dr. Fe Gladys Golo, and Center for Student Affairs Managing Director Dr. Cecilia Resurreccion.#
Special thanks to Ms. Tara Lapiz of OAA for the inputs.
Banner image by StockSnap from Pixabay.
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