The Legacy of Dr. Victor Ordonez
- Saturday, 09 May 2009
MORE TO THE POINT
Florangel Rosario Braid
Friends and colleagues of Vic Ordonez were saddened to hear about the passing away of a man who had brought much honor to the country and the international community through his many extraordinary accomplishments. A man endowed with remarkable vision, he pioneered and excelled in almost every field of knowledge. Consider these feats that are unsurpassed - seven academic degrees, four summa cum laudes, one magna cum laude and one cum laude. Early this year, the De La Salle University conferred on him an honorary degree – Doctor of Humanities for his outstanding achievements in education, management, and the arts.
But the measure of his achievement goes beyond impressive academic and intellectual credentials. His commitment to serve the less advantaged through reforms in education, addressing illiteracy and other social, and cultural gaps in many underdeveloped countries, .puts him in the list of the truly greats. His contributions include educational innovations which he introduced during his stint as executive director of the Educational Development Projects Implementation Task Force and as Undersecretary of the Department of Education, Culture and Sports, and trail-blazing initiatives in teaching, consultancy, research, and publications in private academic institutions and industry. But he considers as his most important professional achievement the management of the global Education for All Movement. This was a program under UNESCO’s Basic Education Division of which he was director. As coordinator of the E-9 project, so called because the project was located in nine high population countries where 63% of the world’s out-of-school children lived, he traveled to various countries and mobilized support that yielded pledges which helped establish 52 million new schools.
Later, as director of the UNESCO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific, he was responsible for implementing massive literacy campaigns and structural reform in countries undergoing transformation towards the market economy, social science analysis of regional problems - mega-urbanization and worker migration, establishment of computer-based networks, redefinition of higher education, redesign of curricula, and the preservation of cultural sites such as the AngkorVat and the Banawe Rice Terraces.
As Senior Education Fellow at the East-West Center in Hawaii during the last few years, he developed a program for educational administrators and policy workers – the “International Forum for Education 2020” aimed at fostering new paradigms for the future. He also dabbles in the arts as actor and director for stage, films, and television.
Friends and family members are setting up a foundation that would honor his memory and address concerns that Vic had earlier identified, namely: bridging the gap between research and policy and practice, gap between the disenfranchised poor, mostly illiterates, and the rest of the world; gap between curricular content and the world of work; and gap between education and the culture of peace. He asks: “In this country of ours, which is woefully slipping away from a culture of peace and I might add, from a culture of integrity, should our educational system not make this a priority?” Vic’s community of admirers and disciples mourn his early demise but will be happy to learn that his legacy – a true “spirit of generosity and genuine service” would soon be perpetuated.
Author's email is florangel.braid@gmail.com.
