Tia Razon

My encore work involves creating, fund-raising for and driving forward programs that provide care to the poor in the Philippines.

In 2008, when I retired from a long career at Intel where I worked creating new business development initiatives, I knew it was time to make a small difference. With my sister, also a long-term Intel employee, I co-founded the Corazon Roxas Foundation to support those caring, but cash-strapped NGO’s working to improve the lives of children and their families in the Philippines.

As a teenager, my family moved to the Philippines from the U.S., and I stayed for 10 years, completing my education here. It was actually a privilege to live in a third-world country and experience real third-world problems first hand.

While in high school, I remember vividly a field trip to a home for disabled orphans. The scene outside of the building was grim, entire families sleeping on woven mats on the sidewalks with their children begging for food. The orphanage itself was very rudimentary, but filled with caring staff. The children were living the most basic of lives, but full of smiles and joy. It was a hard life to imagine when you live in our comparatively abundant lives in America. It made an impact on this teenage girl.

Decades later, during a family visit to Manila, I had a chance visit to a different orphanage. The scene was eerily similar to my childhood remembrances and little had changed in all those years. The memory triggered a sense of needing to do something that would make a difference.

At Corazon Roxas, we began our focus with education, and our first shipment to the Philippines was 400 children’s reading books. The response was overwhelming. Teachers and administrators reported that children were taking books from the shelves, and hiding them under their pillows, so they could read deep into the night. Letters saying “We are poor but rich through your books” or “I traveled to California through your books” streamed in. Today, our book donations reach local schools, libraries and homes in the most remote villages and islands sometimes only accessible by small boats or tricycles.

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We have since created a program providing backpacks filled with school supplies to help families who could not afford them. So far, we’ve assisted over 400 poor families.

It’s been a learning experience. After establishing a scholarship program that had an unfavorable dropout rate, we realized that, when children were hungry or sick, they could not go to school, or complete their education. So, we expanded our range to support medical, dental and nutrition programs.

We have also tried to address immediate needs by helping to rebuild damaged women’s and children’s shelters after the largest typhoon hit the island of Leyte in the Philippines. We now host educational art workshops to build confidence, heal trauma and foster creativity for children in the Philippine slums of Angono.

In many developing countries, a little goes a long way. This is even more true for families who live on $2 a day. What started with a few hundred books and touched a few families has now brought some 75,000 pounds of books, school supplies, clothing and other necessities to hundreds of families and thousands of children.

Sometimes it seems as if all my working years were really preparing me for this, my new life in the service of others. If you choose this path of giving back, it will be the most rewarding of all your careers. Everyone can make a difference, however small.