MANILA HOTEL, Manila — I have given speeches in many places. Barangay health centers with plastic chairs lined up in rows. School gymnasiums with the lights half working. Remote island shores where the only applause was the slap of water against a boat.

But on the evening of March 7, 2026, I stood at a podium inside the ballroom of The Manila Hotel, and I thought to myself: this is a different kind of mission. Just as serious. Just as necessary. And considerably more glamorous.

The Manila Elks Lodge No. 761 had transformed the Grand Dame into something out of a Fitzgerald novel. The Roaring Twenties had come back to Rizal Park, complete with glittering evening wear, a jazz-era mood that hummed through every corner of the room, and a theme that I could not have chosen better myself: “Making a Better World”.

I was honored to be invited to speak that evening, not just because of the occasion. I was moved to be there because of what that room represented: ten years of partnership. A hundred and one quiet acts of generosity that most of the world will never know about, but that have changed the lives of people in places most of that elegant audience has never visited.

Ten Years of Saying Yes

Our partnership with Manila Elks Lodge 761 began in 2015. At the time, Physicians for Peace Philippines was doing what we have always done: going where the need is greatest, bringing healthcare to communities the system had left behind. We needed partners who believed that every Filipino, regardless of where they were born or how far from Manila they lived, deserves quality healthcare. We needed people who would say yes even when the road was long.

Manila Elks Lodge 761 said yes. And for ten years, they never stopped. What I told the room that evening was the truth: their annual donation of one hundred thousand pesos does not stay as a number in our books. In the hands of Physicians for Peace Philippines, that amount becomes eyeglasses for thirty children in Cebu. It becomes a hearing aid for a man on a remote island who had never heard clearly. It becomes a wheelchair for a child with cerebral palsy in Pasig City. It becomes a Pap smear for a woman in Quezon who had never had a cancer screening in her life.

One hundred thousand pesos, multiplied by ten years, multiplied by the skill of our optometrists and audiologists and physical therapists, multiplied by the courage of our volunteers to travel for hours and climb and sail, becomes something that has no price tag. It becomes healthy. It becomes dignity. It becomes hope.

The Stories I Carried into That Room

I did not go to the Manila Hotel that night with a prepared corporate presentation. I went with stories. Because the people in that ballroom deserved to know exactly where their generosity had gone.

I told them about Gogon Elementary School in Caramoan, Camarines Sur, a school so remote it is classified as a last-mile school. To get there, our team drove ten hours through the night, then three more hours to a port, then a two-hour boat ride across open water. The children in Gogon had never had their eyes checked. They were sitting in classrooms, squinting at blackboards, failing to learn, not because they were unable, but because they could not see. Sixty children received prescription eyeglasses on that day, sponsored by the Manila Elks. Thirty-six were screened for hearing. Three young people received hearing aids.

And then there was Alkian. Alkian was the boatman who ferried our team to the island. A strong, quiet young man who navigated us through the water with easy confidence. During the mission, his father asked if we could check his son. Alkian, he said, had a hearing problem. We said yes, of course. He had a perforated eardrum, aggravated, our audiologist suspected, by years of working on the water. That day, Alkian received a hearing aid. On our way back to the boat, one of our team members called out his name from across the shore. Alkian turned around immediately. He heard it. Our whole team broke into applause right there on the water’s edge, with the boats rocking and the sun going down. We had only done a small thing. But for Alkian, it was enough to touch his whole life. When I told that story inside the Manila Hotel ballroom, the room went quiet. That is the kind of quiet you feel when something true lands.

The Woman Who Wants to Say Thank You

I also told them about Gladys Valeros, whom we met at the Missionaries of Charity in Tondo. Cataracts had taken her sight. She was living in difficult circumstances, and she had one wish: to see her family again. We moved quickly. I personally worked to enroll her in PhilHealth and secure her coverage. We arranged financial assistance to remove the economic barriers standing between her and surgery. Sister Maximillean helped us through the process. We secured the referral. Gladys had her first cataract surgery.

When she came back to us afterward, she said, “Now, even with one eye, the world is already clearer. PFPP has given me the hope of seeing my family again”. She is waiting for her second surgery. And her greatest wish is to personally thank the people who made it possible. I told the Manila Elks that night: she is thanking you. Right now, in this room, through me.

When Partners Become Fellow Servants

What moves me most about this partnership is not just how long it has lasted, though a decade is remarkable. It is the way it has grown deeper. The Manila Elks began as generous donors. They became intentional sponsors, choosing which programs and communities to invest in. And then they said something even more meaningful: we want to be there.

So we brought them to Araullo High School in Manila. To the Missionaries of Charity in Tondo. And we planned their participation in a mission right in their own backyard, at Brgy. CAA in BF Las Piñas. That is what a partnership looks like when it matures: it becomes personal. You are no longer just funding a mission from a comfortable distance. You are on the mission. You are seeing with your own eyes what your generosity makes possible. And when you see it, something shifts. The work becomes yours too.

The Weight of a Theme

“Making a Better World”. I spent some time with those words before I spoke that evening, because I felt they deserved more than a banner over a buffet table. Making a better world is not a grand gesture. It is not one enormous act of heroism on one glittering evening. It is the accumulation of small, faithful decisions made by ordinary people who believe that the world as it is, is not the world as it should be.

It is the decision to drive ten hours through the night to reach a school on an island. It is the decision to train a teacher in how to screen children’s eyesight, so that long after you are gone, the children will still be seen. It is the decision to answer a call, write a check, show up, and keep showing up. For fifty years, Manila Elks Lodge No. 761 has been making those decisions. Quietly. Faithfully. Without waiting for applause. In the Philippines, we say: Walang iwanan. No one gets left behind. In the missions of Physicians for Peace Philippines, made possible in no small part by the Elks’ generosity, that saying has become real for thousands of people in the most remote corners of this archipelago.

Standing in That Room

The evening was beautiful, the way only the Manila Hotel can be. Chandelier light bouncing off pearls and barong collars. Laughter fills the space between jazz notes. The Great Auction, the raffle, and the breathtaking performance by World Champion Para Dancers Julius Jun Obero and Edelyn de Asis reminded every person in that room what resilience looks like when it moves.

But the moment I carry with me from that night is simpler. It is the faces of the people in that ballroom when I told them about Alkian turning around. About Gladys saying the world was already clearer. About one hundred and forty-one children in Bicol whose sight was saved, and who have no idea that a lodge of men and women in Manila helped make that possible. That is what fundraising evenings are for, at their best. Not just to raise money, though that matters enormously. But to close the distance between the people who give and the people whose lives are changed by the giving. To make the connection real. Standing at that podium, I felt that connection. Deeply.

Physicians for Peace Philippines is profoundly grateful to Manila Elks Lodge No. 761. For ten years of partnership. For fifty years of service to this country and this world. And for a night in the Roaring Twenties that reminded everyone in the room why they show up.

The work is not done. There are still children in last-mile schools who cannot see the blackboard. There are still women who have never had a cancer screening. There are still people who cannot walk, or hear, or move through the world freely. We will keep going to those places. And we are honored, truly honored, to have the Elks walking beside us.

Maraming salamat po.

Lyne A. Abanilla Chief Operating Officer, Physicians for Peace Philippines