A Christmas Message

Ray Lamdagan, PMP

President, PMI Philippines Chapter

To All PMI Philippines Chapter members, BOD, supporters and friends:

Merry Christmas to all of you. Thank you for your continued support to the chapter. As the year ends, we are blessed with two major good news. First, our application to change the chapter name from PMI MANILA, PHILIPPINES CHAPTER to PMI PHILIPPINES CHAPTER was finally approved by PMI HQ. We have long awaited this approval, in fact it took us several years. Mr. Patrick Ferrer, Ms. Claire Menor-Salumbides, Ms. Casel Ganihong spent a lot of volunteer time as well as some support from the BOD just to fine tune the business plan which is a requisite in the approval. As Philippines Chapter, we now have the mandate to preach, reach, expand and cover the entire Philippine Archipelago, a very challenging undertaking.

Second, I just learned that the PMI PHILIPPINES CHAPTER is now officially a PMI REP - Registered Education Provider. These 2 good news would not have been possible without the dedicated effort of our former president, Mr. Patrick Ferrer. When I assumed leadership sometime in September this year, these two applications with PMI HQ was already on its final phase of approval. As a REP, we can now intensify the offering of training courses.

I would like to thank Patrick for his volunteer service to the chapter as president for more than 10 years. Our chapter has grown to more than 300 members today. When we started PMI Philippines in 1995, there were only less than 20 registered members, of which not more than 10 are active or are attending organizational meeting at Club Filipino under our founding chapter president Mr. Ruperto Kapunan, who also spent the meals from his own pocket since the chapter has no funds yet.

But today, thanks to the leadership of our former president, the chapter is very lucky that our financial standing is very good which enable us to hold chapter activities such as our Christmas party for free or to hold other chapter activities such as technical session at subsidized cost. We accumulated this reserve from incomes in training courses that the chapter conducts regularly. We will continue and intensify these training courses next year. We will also explore other business model in conducting training such as partnering with known project management training provider to offer a wider array of training courses.

PMI is a volunteer organization. Our chapter would not function without the volunteer service of its officers and members. I would like to thank the current members of the board namely Patrick Ferrer, Casila Ganihong, Sergio Tan, Claire Menor-Salumbides, Reginald Nery, Constantine Naval, Ruben Manga, Emilio Tumbocon, and our Cebu coordinator Dino Faustino for the time and effort in running the chapter. Also special thanks to Dr. Ken Smith for his dedicated and loyal service to the chapter.

I encourage all members to be active in running the chapter activities such as by being members in various committee.  I am glad that our members are now active in the chapter by volunteering in the Christmas party committee which was a success. I hope that when a call for volunteer is sounded, many will be interested as we expect a lot of activities next year such as the annual symposium.

Thank you and God bless you all.

Ray Alfonso G. Lamdagan, PMP
President, PMI Philippines Chapter

•     If you are not a PMI member yet, consider being one and join the local chapter of your region get the values of membership.
•     If you are a PMI member residing in Region 15 area and have not joined a Chapter here, consider joining the local Chapter.
•     If you are residing here and are a member but have not renewed your membership, consider renewing it to get the maximum value of being a member.
•     If you are already a dedicated member, consider participating in programs and joining the board/council in volunteering for a good cause --project management professionalism.