Aguman Capampangan inducts 2015 officers and members towards a new era of dedicated service; businesswoman Natividad Mallari-Ng is new president
by Leony Garcia
The province of Pampanga is home to notable personalities like former President Corazon Cojuangco Aquino, the first female president in Asia, and her son, the incumbent president of the land.
Former Presidents Diosdado and Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, Chief Justices Jose Abad Santos and Artemio Panganiban, Archbishop Rufino Cardinal Santos, poets Don Zoilo Hilario and Juan Crisistomo Soto, world-renowned pianist Cecille Licad and Broadway superstar Lea Salonga also call Pampanga their hometown.
Add to this the A-listers showbiz personalities who are of Capampangan descent the likes of Dolphy, Fernando Poe Jr., Helen Gamboa, Hilda Koronel, Melanie Marquez and her brother Joey Marquez, Lito Lapid and his son Mark Lapid, Lorna Tolentino, Jean Garcia, Sharon Cuneta, Judy Ann Santos, Sarah Geronimo and Aljur Abrenica; celebrated indie film director Brillante Mendoza and world-class rapper Apl.de.Ap (Allan Pineda Lindo), of the Grammy-award winning group, ‘The Black Eyed Peas.’
This impressive list proves that Capampangan citizens are not only intellectual, cultured but are leaders in their respective spheres of expertise and influence.
And why not? Capampangans are proud of their race. Call them conceited, call them ethnocentric, but they sincerely believe that they’re the first, the best, and the most in everything. They are fiercely patriotic —first, to Capampangan nation and second to the Filipino nation. So much so that other Filipinos deny their ethnicity, but Capampangans will announce it even when no one’s asking!
Most of all, Capampangans love the good life. For them, there is always a reason to party – a birthday, an anniversary, a promotion – name it, there’s always justification for a festive celebration and an array of the most delicious food — prepared to perfection — served for everyone to taste.
Capampangans’ love for celebrations can be attributed to the fact that they can really cook. Everyone in Pampanga can cook, even the men. Thus, Pampanga’s cuisine tops the culinary map of the Philippines and the province is acknowledged to be the food capital of the country. Other regions are known for single dishes and desserts; but Pampanga has a whole cornucopia of culinary delights, from colonial to folk to exotic.
But despite the seemingly carefree nature of Capampangans, our Cabalens top in resiliency and durability. When Pinatubo erupted in 1991, even the proud scions of genteel families and descendants of poets and warriors had to suffer the indignity of staying in evacuation centers and the difficulty of starting over in resettlement areas. How the Capampangans rose from a depth of despair this low to the economic peak this high is one of the most spectacular recoveries ever seen in this country. Capampangans are a hardy people after all. It took a cataclysmic eruption, followed by four years of pounding by lahars, to bring out their hidden fortitude.
Perhaps it is for these innate characteristics that Aguman Capampangan Foundation has hurdled the test of time and has remained as one of the most successful organizations in the country today which has also duplicated itself in various communities abroad.
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First registered at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as Aguman Capampangan Educational Foundation Inc. in 1982, naturally the group catered to the educational needs of the less privileged members of the society. Recipients mostly came from Quezon City, with the group having been formed in that city with former Quezon City Mayor Adelina Rodriquez as founding chairman.
For 2015, the group is headed by indefatigable lady in the person of Natividad Mallari-Ng, a true-blooded Capampangan, who founded the group of companies involving Jade Valley Restaurants, Aberdeen Court, and Great Eastern Hotels.
Having been part of the group at the prime of her life, just like most members, today the woman leader is more resolute in helping in the community as well as enlarging its outreach to help neighboring provinces which were visited by calamities and disasters.
With the renaming of the club into Aguman Capampangan Foundation Inc., the group promises to stimulate and assist in accelerating the programmed development of manpower of the government with the goal of reducing unemployment and improving the social and economic well being of the people.
Lastly, it will continue to carry on programs of financial assistance in the training of out-of-school youth in line with selected skills, trades, arts and other vocational aspirations which will invariably tend to assist poor families to better standards of living.
From the Philippine Showbiz Republic (PSR), congratulations and more power to Aguman Capampangan!