(Highlights from Atom Araullo's speech delivered at the University of the Philippines Cebu 2025 Commencement Rites on July 4, 2025. Araullo is Fyt's co-founder and president.)
Mga minamahal kong graduates, bago kayo makatikim ng tagumpay, lalamon muna kayo ng katakut-takot na kabiguan.
Remember, there will be good days, days when you’re on top of the world, feeling invincible, indomitable, yung tipo ng araw na mapapakanta ka ng malakas sa shower, at feeling mo favorite ka ni Lord. But there will be bad days as well. Days when you will question your worth, sink into self-doubt, when you don’t even want to shower. Yung mga tipo ng araw na mapapatanong ka: What is the point? Of anything?
Difficult days are unavoidable, but when those days come, avoid the urge to wallow in self-pity. When in doubt, babalikan natin yung paalala ng UP sa atin: “Serve the People.”
I stand before you today not just as a journalist, but as someone who has spent almost 2 decades trying to listen — to truly listen — to the voices often left out of the national conversation: employees who work for starvation wages, farmers forced to leave their land because of calamity or despotic landlords, urban poor families who keep returning to their communities built on scrap materials because they have nowhere else to go.
These are the people whose lives I’ve written about. But more importantly, these are the people that I have learned from and continue to inspire me to be the journalist and Filipino I know I should be.
In every field – whether in government, in the private sector, in media, in science and technology, in public health – you will be asked to make decisions that affect others. The temptation will always be there to prioritize efficiency over empathy, profit over people, or safety over solidarity. But I urge you: resist that temptation. Instead, begin where the people are. Look closely, with unflinching eyes and an open heart, at the lives of the poor and the oppressed, and go where you can provide help and service that are urgently needed.
But serving the people means something deeper than just offering aid or providing assistance. It means striving to understand our countrymen. It means being patient with their logic of survival and the choices they make, both good and bad. It means recognizing the quiet courage it takes to endure poverty.
I ask you, dear graduates: wherever you go, whatever field you enter, serve, understand, and stand with the unseen and forgotten. Make this your anchor. Not because it is fashionable, not because it will earn you awards or praise, but because it is right. Our country cannot be healed from above, with platitudes and charity. It must be rebuilt from the ground up, with the people who have always borne the weight of our country’s broken systems. We must uplift their lives and with it, their dignity.
This is living a life with purpose. While it won’t shield you from the occasional pangs of existential doubt, it can soothe them – especially when we begin to move beyond the question of why, to that of for whom.
As you go on to build your careers and pursue your dreams, please find it in yourselves to carve out space in your lives for works of compassion, service, and justice. Especially because you are iskolars ng bayan. Not scholars of the government, but scholars of the people.
Let us again acknowledge a hard truth: education in the Philippines is still more of a privilege than a right. That makes your presence here, at the University of the Philippines, extraordinary. UP is not just any school; it is the country’s premier academic institution. After today, you are no longer students — you are UP graduates. That title carries weight. It brings with it the respect of society, the trust of employers, and opens doors to opportunities most of our fellow Filipinos will never have.
The question is: will you use that privilege to help others rise?
You don’t have to be poor to stand with the poor. You just have to care enough to act. Because in the end, we are only as strong, and as successful, as the most vulnerable among us. And if we fail them, we fail ourselves and diminish the value of our own humanity.
Today, we must speak with moral clarity: what is happening in Palestine is a genocide. It is one of the most horrific humanitarian catastrophes of our time. We cannot stay silent. The killing of children, the destruction of homes, hospitals, schools – these are crimes that history will remember, and it will ask us: Where were you? What did you say? What did you do?
Even I struggle with that question. And so, allow me to use this platform to do what little I can.
We live in a world of interconnected consequences. Our nation, our people, are not insulated from global war. We must exhort our government to take a stand – demand peace, denounce war, and end the genocide. The people of this country and the people of the world deserve better than endless conflict.
Let us stop measuring success only by personal milestones. Let us measure it also by our capacity to create meaningful change, to fight for what is right, and to speak when silence is more convenient.
Let us build a new kind of unity. One that does not gloss over injustice in the name of a comfort or false peace. But a unity grounded in truth, forged in struggle, and driven by a shared commitment to uplift the least among us.
The future of our country depends on people who are brave enough to ask uncomfortable questions and humble enough to listen to difficult answers. It depends on you.
Let me end with a reminder: service is not a sacrifice – it is a privilege. And understanding is not weakness – it is the foundation of strength.
So go forth with all that your education has given you. But carry also what this world so desperately needs: patience, compassion, and a stubborn, unwavering belief that the poor and oppressed deserve not just help, but justice. — fyt.ph
