Why Efren Peñaflorida is someone to look up to
They rose. They lifted others.
An educator and youth advocate who turned a pushcart into a classroom and brought learning, hope, and second chances to children on the margins.
Sometimes, changing lives does not begin with wealth, power or influence.
Sometimes, it begins with a pushcart.
Efren Peñaflorida grew up amid poverty in Cavite, in a community where gangs and hardship could easily determine a young person’s future.
As a teenager, he experienced bullying and saw other young people being drawn into gangs. But instead of simply escaping that environment himself, he decided to create another path for those coming after him.
At just 16, Efren and fellow students began what became the Dynamic Teen Company, giving young people a productive alternative to gangs and violence.
Then came the idea that would capture the world’s imagination:
IF POOR CHILDREN COULD NOT GET TO A CLASSROOM, WHY NOT BRING THE CLASSROOM TO THEM?
Books, writing materials and teaching supplies were loaded onto pushcarts and wheeled into streets and underserved communities.
The Kariton Klasrum - the Pushcart Classroom - was born.
Volunteer teachers taught children reading, writing, mathematics, hygiene and other basic skills. But they gave them something perhaps even more important:
The belief that their circumstances did not have to determine their future.
In 2009, Efren was named CNN Hero of the Year, bringing international attention to an idea that had begun with a handful of young Filipinos simply wanting to help.
But the recognition was not the end of his work.
The pushcart-classroom movement grew, thousands of young volunteers became involved, and the work eventually reached tens of thousands of children.
What makes Efren Peñaflorida someone I look up to is not that the world called him a hero.
It is that long before the awards and international recognition, he had already chosen to become one.
He took the education that helped lift him from poverty and TURNED AROUND TO BRING IT BACK TO OTHERS.
A pushcart once associated with poverty became something entirely different in his hands: