Written by Vice President for Internal, Ate Charmain Tan
Today we celebrate the 10th year anniversary of U! Happy Events. Founded in 2006, U! Happy Events provides sustainable support and teaches values to marginalized children in the different communities in the Philippines. We have done more than 900 volunteer events and partnered with numerous sponsors and over a hundred beneficiaries to date.
Our celebration included the U! Happy Events core team as well as our partner beneficiaries and suppliers who have been with us throughout the decade. The event was hosted by our new president Glenn Costless and board member Rica Leyritana. As we welcomed our core team, beneficiaries and suppliers, we were able to get to know one another better by talking about how long we have partnered with U! Happy Events, what motivates us to volunteer, and others. It was nice getting to know our partner beneficiaries and suppliers more since we interact with them regularly.
The program started with an invocation by our Treasurer Ate Te Candano and our founder Kuya Harvard Uy de Baron. We then got to enjoy the buffet dinner prepared by the newly opened Sangkap Restaurant in Pasig. After dinner we participated in an energizing. There were paper cutouts given to each team. The cutouts were different professions we all hope the children would one day become. The team members were to transfer the cutouts from one paper plates to the other using the straws. Everyone was on their feet as they played enthusiastically. We then gave out illustration boards to each team and they drew their vision of what we are volunteers for the children. All the teams did a great job as they drew different themes like love, hope, sharing, and others.
The two adorable children from Little Lights Ministry, Iris and Shelo, shared a song number with us.
We then got to hear from Ate Chessika Chua, who started volunteering with U! Happy Events few years back. She shared her reasons and motivations for continuously spending her saturdays with the children and is now one of the newly elected officers for 2017. We also got to hear from Kuya Joseph Casaje of Little Lights Ministry as he retold how our partnership with them began. It started with Kuya Harvard bringing donations to their community by himself and now together with the other core team members we get to visit their community regularly.
Kuya Harvard founded U! Happy Events aiming to extend the happiness and to teach values to the children through meaningful activities and workshops. He believed it was possible and started getting more people involved in achieving this vision. Our family has grown to include 50 core team members who dedicate their time to give back and share their blessings with the children. We have served 5.990 children in the different communities over the last decade. We thank everyone for constantly supporting our cause as we continue to reach out to marginalized children in the years to come.
