Engineer Romy Cabellon making a point during our site visit to CeC San Remigio

We worried about loved ones and the people of Metro Manila, but we also couldn’t help enjoying the lovely weather in Cebu City. Habagat was dumping tons of rainwater onto the National Capital Region and its neighboring provinces.  In Cebu City it was both sunny and breezy, and the air was fresher than we were used to.

From August 12-18, we were in Cebu City for an experiment of sorts. We had been holding the Essentials of CeC Management training course in either Pasig City, home to the Development Academy of the Philippines or in neighboring Quezon City.  Just this once, we thought we would try a new location.  We wanted to visit “model” CeCs in locations away from Metro Manila and away from our “usual suspects” in Cavite and Batangas, and learn from them whatever they had to teach us.  But could we make the training course work? Would it be too complicated?  Would we find good resource persons among the local crop of knowledge workers?

We needn’t have worried.  The logistic complications were more than made up for by the golden nuggets we unearthed.  We visited the CeC in San Remigio, a three-hour ride north of Cebu City, along winding roads flanked by dense thickets of tall trees on one side and the shimmering, shining sea on the other.  We visited another CeC in Bogo, just a few kilometers away from San Remigio, so before that day was over we and our training participants had learned some valuable lessons from two quite different CeCs.

As for our “experimental” resource persons, we could not have found a brighter pair of lecturer-practitioners.  Engineer Romarico Cabellon of San Remigio was one of the earliest people to put up a CeC, in 2004, when CeC Managers were shoved into the deep end of the pool, as it were, and told to sink or swim, without any training.  (How fortunate are the CeC Managers of today, who start at the shallow end of the pool, forewarned of dangers and forearmed with techniques by the NCC and the DAP.)  He holds the distinction of being the first CeC Manager to establish a CeC at barangay level.  Mr. Eugene Ramos established the CeC of Tanauan in 2005 (a “pre-training” year as well), and holds the distinction of having won the Most Outstanding CeC Manager and Most Outstanding CeC awards for 2011.  There was warm sunshine outside the Golden Prince Hotel; our dynamic duo brought some golden sunshine into the training room as well, for they showed what passion and a little ingenuity can accomplish, even in the face of seemingly complicated obstacles.

The hotel service was excellent; the three-story bookstore a few hundred meters away was excellent; the food was excellent; my morning jog was excellent; the three-story bookstore a few hundred meters away was excellent; my project teammates were excellent; the three-story bookstore a few hundred meters away was excellent; most important of all, our participants, from all over the Visayas, were excellent.  (Did I mention the excellent three-story bookstore a few hundred meters away?)  What is it with Cebu?  Was everyone so passionate and so intelligent because we were in Cebu?  Or were our participants really just passionate and intelligent, period?

Training experiences don’t get any better than this.  Not for the trainers, anyway.