Then, there was that vision of seeing a big and happy MC/MI alumni family communicating easily with each other as we reminisce our school days and thinking of how we can help our alumni and alma mater.

To realize this vision, the project to bring MC/MI alumni closer together was launched on September 12, 2005. The task was given to the ad-interim “Committee in Bringing MC Alumni Together”. We started from an initial group of 48 participants/alumni. From time to time, we would like to give the members information as to how we are doing. This is the first progress report since we launched this effort.

This report will cover the following:
1.) Where are we now?
2.) What are our current problems? And
3.) Where are we going?

Where are we?

Five months and 10 days later, we have now established a network of 633 MC/MI alumni residing in various parts of the world. Communication could be done through the conventional postal mail, email, or through phones. Top ten classes with the most representation in descending order are: 1965, 1966, 1990, 1957, 1992, 1993, 1989, 1963, 1962, and 1976. Forty-eight out of 76 MC/MI classes or 63% are represented at least by one member. Classes from 1951 and earlier and 1953, 1954, 1960, 1967, and 2005 have no registered member.

We are now capable of bringing instant news/messages (in seconds if they are online) to 224 members through our MC Alumni Yahoo forum. Some 803 messages have been posted since August 16 when it was formally started. The line of communication has been continuously tested through sending of jokes, greetings, and announcements.

Formally, we have launched 10 MC classes’ websites/homepages at our MC Alumni Network website. Each page has greetings from leaders of each class, messages from members, and some reunion pictures. With a realistic number of 60 classes (1945-2005), this represents 20% so far. We hope to complete at least 75% or more at least 45 webpages by the end of the year.

We have established a continuing awareness of existence of our unity effort through our MC Alumni Network. This is considerably a plus factor in this effort to unite our alumni. As of March 10, 2006, we have a total of 3,351 visitors (counting started Sept 12, 2005) or 13 visitors per day or 94 per week. The extent of global coverage of the network is apparent in this statistics of point of origin of visitors: 63.4% from USA, 23.6% from the Philippines, 6.5% from Canada, 2.3% from Australia, and the rest from far places like Saudi Arabia, Hong Kong, United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Japan, Macao, United Kingdom, Kuwait, Taiwan, Mozambique, Spain, Germany, Netherlands, South Korea, China, Norway, Italy, Ireland, and Thailand.

We tried to transform the website, too, to an alumni service-oriented center. The job placement section was added to keep alumni informed of existing job vacancies. In addition, we have the announcement section created as a venue to make announcements of forthcoming reunions, meetings, parties, and other messages.

We are glad to announce, through our network, the following class years which are having a class reunion this year and next:

a.) Class 1981 – Will hold a class reunion (25 years) on May 27, 2006 with Raniceto Sakay, Rufino Alcaraz Jr. and Benjie San Luis from Philippines orchestrating the event. Raniceto Sakay just announced in the website that they are holding a class meeting at SM Marilao this Sunday, March 12. It was finalized that Silver Grand Reunion dubbed as "25 SAKTO!" will be held on May 27, 2006, Saturday from 3:00 pm to 11:00 pm at Constantino Gym, Marilao, Bulacan.

b.) Class 1963- 43 years class reunion to be held October 27, 28 and 29 this year. Class President Sid Dela Cruz from Nevada, with Greg Mendoza, Roy Mananquil, Ellie Villamil, Teddy Crespo, Jaime San Luis from California, Cris Mendoza and Lolit Garcia from Canada, Eduardo Duque from Chicago as well as Rolando Reyes, Angel Villanueva, Benito Joson and Emelita Herrera from the Philippines assisting to have a successful gathering. The class leaders had a meeting last March 11.

c.) Class 1966 – Will have their Ruby Jubilee on October 28 and 29, 2006. Jerry Deganos from California leading the class with Joe Cabigas, Manny Dela Cruz, Benilda Ipapo, Ofelia Aquino Beltran from USA and Evangeline Ipapo Syjuco, Leonora Ipapo Silva, Bernie Monedero, Lily Linsangan and Felisa Soriano Justiniani from the Philippines helping.

d.) Class 1962 – Will hold their 45 years anniversary celebration in January, 2007. Nina Blanco Atienza from California started talks about the reunion and spread to classmates from there. Baby Esguerra Holandez, Tony Sales and Bernie Morales from USA helping in the planning while Cynthia Sta. Ana Cruz, Boyet Pineda and Edna Llenado Garcia are the RP coordinators assigning the various committees. They will have a mini-reunion in Las Vegas this coming March 18 with classmates from California, Chicago and New Jersey per communication from class leader Nina.

e.) Class 1957 – Will have a Golden Anniversary Homecoming in 2007 (no exact date yet). Rey Buenaventura, Lita Prodon Razon and Esmeralda Abano Mendoza all from New Jersey, Angelina Evangelista Legaspi from NY, Florinda Gonzales Abrigo from Seattle, and Victor Dalmacio from California planning the event. Rey hinted he is going home to RP in May to meet with class leaders Tony Abacan, Estrellita Abergas Anastacio, Jaime Cruz, Ruben Salvador, Antonio Lim, Regidor Avellanosa (current class president in RP), and Benjamin Munoz among others. Classmates Violeta Manalastas Manansala from Rhode Island, Julia Lim from Australia and Margarita Mendoza Salcedo Hart of Denver Colorado were also reported to be going home to join the class reunion planning.

Current problems?

We need to improve on our committee organizational set-up particularly the RP Coordinators. We need more dedicated volunteers to directly assist us in running the committee. Ideally, we need one more volunteer per class who will take care of finding out information for his/her respective class and sending them to us for inclusion in the database. It is clearly visible in the Alumni Network section that those later years are the ones lacking leaders and batch representation – particularly 1970’s to 2000’s years. We hope to initially improve this matter as soon as we receive a report from our RP Coordinators.

More so, we need volunteers from the Philippines since majority of our alumni are still based locally. We have been lagging behind in using the conventional search methodology (search, visits, texting, and research) though. Much of the success of this huge undertaking will depend largely on our ground troops based in the Philippines who would do the dirty job of searching alumni and leaders or digging current records from MC or local agencies. We know this undertaking would really be hard and it would require extreme sacrifice from them in terms of time, effort, and resources. We learned this hard fact from our experience in MI’65 organization. Nevertheless, this is an area where we need to be more active if we are to fully succeed in our endeavor.

More importantly, direct connectivity between the MC Administrators and the organizational committee should be resolved soon. We have tried establishing contact between the MC administrators and us but the process is slow. It might not be a setback at the moment, but we really need some blessings from them if we are to legitimize the effort and succeed. There were feelers from the administrators to have only one website for the alumni. We are open to this suggestion and asked them how they plan to implement this.

One may note that the ultimate benefits would fall to MC since the organizational committee would soon transfer its machineries to the MC Alumni Association. The association would then sponsor projects that would have strong impact on alumni and MC’s effectiveness to perform its educational mission.

Where Are We Going?

In one of our objectives, we set-up a one year time frame for the organizational committee to establish an MC/MI alumni network where majority of the classes are well represented. We are ready to offer this well-oiled machinery to the existing alumni association during the next convention of the MC Alumni Association as mandated by its constitution and bylaws.

Preparatory for this significant milestone, we have thought of the following committees:

1.) Decision Committee – this will be formed from dedicated leaders from some chosen classes by mid-year. This committee will address important issues which are essential to the success of this project.

2.) Finance Committee – A Finance committee has already been created with Cris Mendoza of Canada from Class ’63 as Director. He is in the process of gathering comments and suggestions regarding the future acquisition and monitoring of funds for the MC Alumni Association – truly a delicate matter that needs joint endorsements from dedicated leaders.

Summary

We are right on track with our mission of bringing MC/MI alumni closer together. We have to keep the light burning and the spirit alive to ensure that we will be there in the finish line. Please continue to spread the words to your classmates, relatives, and friends who are graduates of MC/MI. Encourage them to register at our website and join the MC Alumni Network yahoo forum.

For our alma mater, MC/MI.

End of First Report March 10, 2006.

September 25,2005 Welcome to www.MCGraduates.Net, a website that will bring all graduates of Meycauayan College (then Meycauayan Institute) from around the world closer together ! After our successful 40th Anniversary Reunion/Medical Mission of MI Class '65 last June, my classmate and friend Rolly Malinis confided in me about his dream of uniting all alumni of Meycauayan College towards a common goal for the benefit of our school and fellow graduates. This website is the initial answer to his dream !

Edgar Gonzales MI'65

When he offered me the position of Co-Chairman in Bringing All Alumni Together, I gladly accepted this one-in-a-million chance to make a difference in ultimately orchestrating projects for our school and fellow alumni as well. We have to start somewhere and this website is the best that we can imagine, taking advantage of the power of information technology as well as our adrenalin from our recently concluded Ruby Jubilee Reunion of Class 1965 ! Again, we offer this service to our school which means so much to us. With this scenario and a noble mission, this joint project was born ! All our objectives are already stated in "About Us" section in this website. To attain these objectives, I shall be contacting presidents and leaders of all classes - from 1929 to 2005, to introduce them to this wonderful project, assist them in creating a webpage for their respective classes, settting up their messages, and even announcing their desire to have a class reunion of their own. We shall link all websites of all classes to this main website, including that of Meycauayan College, for immediate and available viewing of everybody around the world. Truly, this will be a great project and all alumni of MC will love this idea of having something to watch in their computers if they want to reminisce their high school happenings with old classmates and additionally see what's going on with our school. All they have to do is click to their graduation year and maybe they will even be surprised that a reunion is cooking sometime in the near future for their own class ? Setting up the classes' webpages will take long but surely, a big and wonderful project like this will not be done overnight, would it? But we will do it, slowly but surely and let us see what happens. We don't have a definite schedule of when we shall have a convention of leaders to elect our officers but we will know it in due time. We will give you progress reports in our website. Afterall, when we think about what our teachers said in World History-in 'The Glory that was Greece and the Grandeur that was Rome' - "Rome was not built in a day !" We need your comments, suggestions and input. Help us make this dream a complete reality ! Edgar Gonzales, MI Class '65 Co-Chairman for Operations (Committee in Bringing All Alumni Together)