Mission and Vision

A Better Motibot
(our team's mission and vision)

                A vision. A goal. A vision starts with a plan. They say no man is an island. This holds true for a team of doctors coming from a densely populated region in the country with the dream of serving humanity in a dignified manner using the principles taught by St. Ignatius himself.

                Each person envisions things differently. We envision mostly because we’re easily put in a trance-like state when being compared to another person, another country, etc. The idea of having something better than what we have entices a person or, in our case, a group of people to make a difference to achieve what is deemed unachievable. The possibility of a better and brighter tomorrow might seem unreachable to some but entirely plausible with a little hard work and determination for a selected few. Such possibilities are in the making for Team Motibot.

                With empowered minds and conditioned bodies, Team Motibot treaded great distances in hopes of touching people lives by providing medical aid and support with the recently concluded exposure held from June 23 till July 14 year 2019.With the overwhelming number of households, an aim was set to achieve the targeted number set to be able to reach the vision of a healthier and more empowered Barangay Motibot. Amidst the number of trials and setbacks faced by the group be it from the forces of Mother Nature or the insurmountable terrain we must trek, the group is faced with the realization that along with the vision of change comes a mission to trek the rockiest roads and the highest hills under a burning sun. The process is a rigorous one but is definitely something worthwhile if it means being able to make a difference in the lives of people who have the simplest of means to make the day work.

                As a group of student doctors, a vision and a hope for change shall always encompass our minds. Challenging as it seems, having each other to lean on and by the grace of God, adversities and difficulties can surely be surpassed.

An Impossible Possibility
(ADZU-SOM)

            One man. One vision. It all started with a visionary, a person who could see beyond what an ordinary eye can see. It started with a dream; a dream that only aspires the betterment of the region and the nation. It started with a belief that didn’t need the faith of many but only a few. It started in the most humble of beginnings but got recognized by top dogs not only in the Philippine archipelago but to the rest of the world. This is the Ateneo de Zamboanga School of Medicine.

            The Ateneo de Zamboanga School of Medicine is a small community. It is a community working towards a common goal, a goal to not only acquire the knowledge and skills, buried in deep recesses of a person’s psyche that only needs the right amount of stimulus to treat diseases, but also to reach unreachable places where healthcare is nothing but a mirage. The School of Medicine like all other medical schools incorporates an essence of learning among all others. It tries to instill the virtue that learning is not a torture chamber for medical students to be gassed by Harrison’s and Guyton but rather it should be deemed as an enjoyable process; a process when one gets to learn and understand an incomprehensible topic, where one triumphs and fails with his or her peers and that it’s a process where students should be encouraged and not repulsed by. With the Problem Based Approach in learning, students accomplish just that. It teaches a sense of discipline not many may possess and it broadens a student’s perspective to learn more than just a façade. It all starts with a case; a case presented by gods and legends walking the school’s halls. Legends in hope’s that one day, a student can be a cardio god, an ortho goddess or a surgery legend. This fuels a student’s aspiration even more just by their mere presence. One such legend is no other than the very first pediatric gastroenterologist of Zamboanga City, our very own dean, Dr. Fortunato Cristobal.

            Despite the sparking interest of learning and treating diseases of the human body, what sets the Ateneo de Zamboanga School of Medicine apart from other medical schools is the population strand in learning where it displays social accountability as an essential part for a holistic form of education that broadens a student’s perspective to not only confine themselves within four walls of a hospital but also to take into account the social, political and economic factors that  may come to play for health problems to occur especially in areas untouched and unseen. This made it possible for the school to gain the recognition most didn’t think possible to achieve. This is the crowning jewel of the Ateneo de Zamboanga School of Medicine. Its doctors having peasant’s feet, walking several kilometers to aid the poorest of the poor in the rural aspect of the community, humbling themselves to care for the marginalized and ostracized. This sets the bar high for most medical schools to emulate and achieve for themselves that gained particular recognition in Laos and Nepal.

Not many believed in this approach especially to established institutions where they deem the Ateneo de Zamboanga School of Medicine as an embryonic school incapable of maturity and development. 25 years later, what was once impossible are now walking possibilities around Zamboanga Peninsula; 400 working graduates turning one man’s dream a hundred fold for the betterment of Western Mindanao and beyond.