Young Minds Academy Fast Paced Fast Forward or YMA is a youth citizenship and development program sponsored by the Ramon Aboitiz Foundation Inc. open to all Filipino youth ages 12 – 30 yrs. old who aims to develop young and emerging leaders to be responsible, pro-active and accountable citizens and leaders in the near future who are ready to serve the public and become world citizens promoting the virtues of peace, pluralism, respect, and multi-cultural understanding through awareness, education, immersion, and open discourse.
Since its official launching last December 26, 2006, YMA has been part of my priorities and weekend activities. Together with my group mates, we venture different kinds of people every time we would have a session since the range of the ages that belonged to this Academy is quite vast. Despite also of the fact that we are all strangers, the adjustment period took us a while, but each session always means a chance for us to bond and get to know each other.
It is not that easy to belong in this academy since commitment is much needed and a very big issue. At the start, I’d never expected it would come out this hard yet this easy and fun! I don’t know but it seems like there are times that I really enjoy the sessions but there are also times that my heart really hurts when important activities would also happen on the very same days. Of course, I have to choose because I can’t do two things at the same time, and weighing is very hard to do. Good thing that when I give up one, I don’t regret my decision.
Being part of YMA gave me the opportunity to be in places that I had never been, talk to the resource speakers who are really the best in their fields, and even eat and sleep with no expense at all!
The very delicious food is honestly one of the major factors that keep me so excited every time we would have a session. It is because, we never experienced hunger wherever we are, and our comfort is really their priority.
Also, fun and unforgettable moments would come our way like, picture taking here and there, non-stop joking and having fun and the bonding that keeps on getting stronger.
Yes, it is fun and expense-free and only commitment is needed to be in the academy, but when I am with them, I am not myself. I am so quite and I tend to act to be somebody I am not. Like, being so prim and proper all the time which means I can’t laugh out loud or I can’t spill a joke or I can’t sit the way I used to sit, and it makes me sick! I can’t talk to anyone how I really feel because they don’t know the people I am talking about and I still have to explain so many things over and over again just to share a very simple feeling, or experience. I really have to be this and that and I have to do this and that just to please the people I am with. It feels like someone else out of me is emerging out every time I would do something that is concerning the academy.
I miss my friends when I’m there. I miss my dear comfort zones when I am there and I miss being myself when I am there. And being someone I’m not is the hardest thing to be when I am there.
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