Matters India Reporter
Mandaluyong City, the Philippines, March 27, 2020 — Alumni of Don Bosco Technical College Mandaluyong City came forward to back up volunteer initiatve of students who could not return to their far away homes duing the Covid 19 locked down and decided in stead to make face masks for frontline health workers.
Of 35 or so boarder/scholars who were training under Don Bosco Technical College’s TVET program of 15 months, along with more than a hundred others, had to stop schooling when the Enhanced Community Quarantine was enforced, first, in Metro Manila and the day after, all over Luzon. The majority of them, like all students in all levels everywhere, had to be quarantined in their respective homes.
However, 14 students from distant Palawan area had nowhere to go but stay in the Pinardi Boarding House of Don Bosco Tech Colege Mandaluyong.
“True to the teachings of Don Bosco, aware that ‘idleness is the devil’s workshop,’ the 14 young men were immediately co-opted into collective, productive work of fabricating Face Shields for medical frontliners, the nurses and doctors,” says Rector and President of Don Bosco Technical College Fr. Vitaliano Chito Dimaranan.
The young people were resourceful and used what Don Bosco himself would have used – readily and commonly available items like acetates, thread, double sided tape, and ceiling insulation foam materials to make the face shields.
On 26 March 2020, at exactly 5:30 pm, three of these ‘angels’ brought the first 450 face shields to 8 different hospitals in Metro Manila.
Fr. Dimaranan says, “Angels have taken over the workshop and are not working alone, as they are backed by a growing list of alumni and other donors, who help prevent the well of good deeds from running dry.”