Payatas, Marcus Smith and Rugby… what in heaven’s name do they have in common? I bet you a million bucks nobody will figure this out! Well, on 7 August these three seemingly disparate stellar entities will converge on the galaxy of life, particularly of the poorest of the poor youths. Let me explain.

A few months ago, the Rotary Club of Makati launched the Paing Hechanova Youth Leadership Awards, a nationwide search for the most outstanding Filipino youths who exemplify Rotary International’s service areas of focus.

One particular youth who stood out merited from the judges a special recognition award. She is Ronalyn Lagarta, the Sports Center Manager of the Fairplay For All Foundation, a privately funded NGO promoting sports development for the youth in the community of Payatas in Quezon City, a name derived from the phrase “payat sa taas,” thin at the top, which describes the soil in the upper part of the Tullahan River, which is unsuitable for planting rice.

For the uninformed about society’s recent tragedies, Payatas has the notoriety of having once been a dumpsite and the graveyard of hundreds of resident scavengers who were buried on 10 July 2000 in a landslide of garbage, trash, rubble, scrap and detritus of the privileged minority who take so much for granted and the mindless majority of our citizenry who surely have no idea where their gargantuan refuse end up.

This incident prompted the government to pass legislation to ban open dumpsites by 2001 and controlled dumpsites by 2006. Perhaps for showbiz effect, the immediate closure of Payatas was ordered by then President Estrada. But like most well intentioned legislation in our country, execution is another story.

Soon after its closure, Quezon City Mayor Mel Mathay reopened the facility due to concerns about a possible epidemic because of the uncollected garbage piling up mountain-high in the city. My guess though is that it was also the political pressure from the thousands of residents who depended on the dumpsite for their livelihood. Scavengers scrounge daily from sunrise to sunset for different kinds of waste materials to sell to junkyards and recycling processors.

Ronalyn recounts her scavenging days starting at the age of nine to also be a breadwinner along with her father and provide food for their family of eleven children and an unemployed mother. She would wake up at dawn to catch waste-loaded dump trucks along Commonwealth Avenue to have first crack at the trash en route to Payatas. By mid-morning she would go to school, often teased and shunned by her classmates for her foul garbage smell. By late afternoon after school, she would head back to the dumpsite for the evening shift of dump trucks.

On a good day, she could earn P200 but on a bad day P50 was all she would bring home. For respite, at the prodding of a transplanted guardian angel of Payatas, a Briton, Roy Moore, who founded Fairplay, she enjoyed with friends the simple act of kicking a soccer ball into a net between two posts.

Soon her football skills attracted the attention of schools which eventually would land her an athletic scholarship and a slot on the national team. After impressively graduating Cum Laude from UST, she decided to head back to Payatas to pay back her community and to engage kids in their love of sports.

Ronalyn is an inspiring, fantastic example of what grit and determination to succeed in life fueled by a healthy dose of human kindness from benevolent souls like her mentor Roy can give rise to, regardless of one’s circumstances in life.

Next is Marcus Smith, who somewhat parallels the world of Ronalyn but under entirely different circumstances. He is a half Pinoy-half Briton born in the Philippines to a well-off Filipina mother and an English banker-father. He is a dynamic rugby fly-half — the equivalent of a point guard in basketball akin perhaps to a Stephen Curry — and a global byword in the world of international rugby union, a centuries-old sport popular primarily in the former countries of the British Commonwealth, and a close cousin of soccer.

Rugby is played mainly by running with an oval-shaped ball in hand to reach the end zone in between two H-shaped goal posts to score. Marcus is visiting the Philippines from 5-12 August and would like to promote sports development and do rugby charity events locally for the underprivileged youths of Fairplay through his own Kalabaw charity. A Community Day cum sports training session is planned with the Payatas kids and Coach Ronalyn during his visit in cooperation with the Rotary Club of Makati – our modest contribution to promote sports development among the underprivileged youth.

Until next week… OBF!

For comments, email bing_matoto@yahoo.com.