SYMBOLIC TURNOVER OF PPE SETS. On Wednesday afternoon, April 29, CLIMBS Life and General Insurance Cooperative and representatives from various Xavier Ateneo groups have turned over 270 sets of high-quality Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) sets to Northern Mindanao Medical Center (NMMC), the COVID-19 referral hub of Region 10.

Report by Stephen Pedroza
Photo by Ray Anthony Reyes

CLIMBS Life and General Insurance Cooperative and representatives from various Xavier Ateneo units turned over 270 sets of high-quality Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) to Northern Mindanao Medical Center (NMMC) on Wednesday afternoon, April 29.

The generous donation of CLIMBS, valued at over half a million pesos, will be used to protect the medical professionals in the frontline of curbing the spread of COVID-19 in Region 10.

The PPE sets were formally received by Chiqui Mag-usara, an administrative officer of NMMC, while relating a message of solidarity with the medical professionals.

“We are grateful that during this time of shortage of PPEs … your generosity will enable NMMC to keep its promise to its personnel that they will be given a safe way to continue working and serving despite the increased hazards,” Mag-usara said.

CLIMBS president and CEO Noel Raboy, in his message, expressed his gratitude to XU-ALS for setting up the donation call early on and they hope to form more partnerships with the university in the future. He shared that this donation goes in line with the values of the cooperative movement, building a sense of community amid the crisis.

“From our Community Development Fund, we have chosen to donate PPEs worth Php500,000 each to various centers responding to COVID-19 in the country, such as the Philippine General Hospital for Luzon, Vicente Sotto Hospital in Cebu for the Visayas, and here in NMMC for Mindanao,” Raboy shared.

“This donation is our way of paying forward to our community from the fruits of our labor. We hope and pray that this will help end the crisis the soonest.”

The said donation was made possible through the initiative of the XU Association of Law Students (XU-ALS), the partner student organizations of XU Law, and the Advocacy Office of the XU Social Development Cluster.

XU-ALS president Kristyl Bern Ponferrada and XU advocacy head Nestor Banuag Jr (on behalf of Xavier Ateneo president and chief of mission Fr Roberto C Yap SJ) facilitated the turnover ceremony held at the SC Drypond. They are both thankful to the donor-organization and to all the people behind the challenging procurement of the PPE.

“We are grateful to all the people who made this donation successful,” Ponferrada said. “This has been a unique situation because most of us only met online but through this online platform, we were able to do something great.”

Banuag added: “We, at Xavier Ateneo, are implementing creative processes to respond institutionally to address the COVID-19 pandemic. … We are blessed to have our alumni who are now in different institutions, such as CLIMBS, for sharing their resources and helping the university in all of our efforts.”

Xavier Ateneo, through its Chemistry Department, has recently made headlines for the production and distribution of alcohol not just to NMMC but also to other hospitals in Cagayan de Oro City.∎