IT was certainly a surprising reunion of sorts for me with Department of Interior and Local Government ( DILG) Secretary Benhur Abalos recently.

I would never have thought of seeing him at the opening of the 2nd All Filipino Conference of the Premiere Volleyball League( PVL) at the Smart Araneta, but it turned out he had a pretty good reason to be there.

In fact when I saw him at the media room, he was seated between PVL’ s Ricky Palou and Tony Boy Liao. It was a mini press conference announcing the tie up of the two parties for DILG’s anti drug abuse initiative, and highlighted by the signing of a Memorandum of Agreement ( MOA) afterwards.

And I am happy that Sec. Abalos acknowledged me when he saw me among the media people present. I even had the opportunity to chat with him and Ricky too about this new partnership.

You see when I first met the Secretary, he was still a young councilor in Mandaluyong City, where he became a many-term Mayor and a Congressman too.

We had an anti-drug abuse project among the city’s public and private high school journalists. We published a regular community newsletter, OPLAN Lingap Bulletin. I was editor and the writers were all students doing pieces related to our campaign.

I was also doing training sessions every year with the members of what became known as the Young Journalists Association of Mandaluyong or YJAM, even holding a forum where I would invite PBA players to train the students on live interview techniques, even going all the way to PBA games in a tie up with the league and brought students to post game interviews.

But I decided to expand the program and with the support of then Mayor Abalos, I started doing leadership and values formation workshops for the students, starting in Hotel La Corona in Pagsanjan, then for a long time in Mt. Banahaw, experiences that these students remember up to now.

I felt if I could help the students develop the proper values in life, on their own, they would decide that drugs is a big NO-NO in life.

The Mayor liked the program.

Aside from the objectives and activities, he saw public and private high school students working together, some of them even became friends, some of them became my core group after high school and provided staff support for me for YJAM activities.

Up to the present, my core group remains intact and helps me in my yearly Christmas gift giving in Mt. Banahaw and for street kids in Manila.

I shared this to understand better why Sec. Abalos continues to promote his anti drugabuse campaign focused on young people, and he has tied up his DILG program with the PBA and the UAAP, prior to the PVL, recognizing the influence of sports heroes on young people.

He even stayed for awhile to watch the games but had the time to chat with me on the way to the ringside section, and asked questions about women’s volleyball, surprised when he learned that salaries in the league reach six figures already for established superstars.

On his part, Ricky plans to have the league to be more active in the random drug testing of players, looking at more regular testing each playing day for all the teams seeing action.

He is also open to players doing advocacy talks on the importance of staying away from drugs, so we should see more activities along the campaign for next year.

Me, I am more than happy to be part of such programs in whatever way I can. In fact I already suggested to Sec Abalos to explore talks with the Philippine Olympic Committee( POC) to involve national athletes and with Filipino Chinese Amateur Athletic Federation (FCAAF), which has expressed interest.

Say No to drugs please.

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