President’s Page

Good evening, distinguished guests, and members of the Filipino American Nurses Organization of Grand Canyon State, better known as FANOGCS. Today, we are celebrating a milestone anniversary and induction ceremony. We witnessed the induction of the newly elected officers for the term 2024-2026, and I am honored to be part of this momentous occasion.

I just want to share my personal experience. In 2003, I migrated to the United States on my own. I left behind my family in the Philippines. Despite feeling alone in an unfamiliar environment, I found comfort in the support of the Filipino community. This inspired me to join this organization and give back to the community.

When I joined this organization four years ago, my primary aim during that period was solely to participate in the Medical Mission. The idea of becoming the President of this organization had not crossed my mind. With my predecessors, Melody Orillo and Donnabella Maglalang, having set high standards, I recognized that leading this organization as President would demand unwavering dedication and time commitment. However, I never felt isolated in this endeavor since FANOGCS functions as a team. Fundamentally, this is what this organization stands for.

At FANOGCS, our mission is to promote and advance the profession of nursing through leadership, education, community service, and global outreach. We have helped a lot of charitable institutions through our disaster relief, community assistance and healthcare projects.  We had our medical mission last year in the Philippines, with the next one in January 23-25, 2026, in El Salvador City, Misamis Oriental near Cagayan de Oro.  In my term, I will focus also on education and leadership.

Each term, the President creates his or her own mantra. I called my mantra: the Triple A: Act, Advance, Advocate.

1. ACT – One of the key pillars here at FANOGCS is that we aspire to achieve our mission and ACT on it with collective responsibility as a member-led, member-driven organization.
2. ADVANCE – As a professional nursing organization, we constantly aim to ADVANCE the growth of our nursing profession through leadership development and educational programs.
3. ADVOCATE – One of our main objectives is to be an ADVOCATE in serving the community through our local and global outreach as a nonprofit organization.

We kindly invite all healthcare workers in this room who are not members of our organization to consider joining us in our mission to serve. If you have a passion for helping others, we welcome you to approach any of our FANOGCS members to learn more. Moreover, we encourage each of our existing members to recruit just one new member each. Imagine the impact we could make if we doubled our members to two hundred.

Now the time has come to end the torture I have all given you. Let me end my talk with a funny, but true story. But this story proved how we, as a community, work as a team and support each other. I remember very vividly 21 years ago, on my very first day working as a nurse here in the U.S. My mentor was Filipino, our charge nurse was Filipino, and our CNA was Filipino. The four of us went to a room, with a confused patient. He was unsteady on his feet but kept getting out of bed. When he finally lay down in bed, the charge nurse asked the patient: “Do you know where you are right now?” The patient was looking at me, looking at the charge nurse and kept looking at the four of us. Finally, he answered and said: “I don’t know. Maybe in Japan?”

Thank you for this golden opportunity to speak in front of you and have a wonderful evening!