Tuloy Foundation is sited as a model in the book entitled Leading beyond the Walls. It is a book published under the auspices of Drucker Foundation.
“People can change…but real change is the outcome of personal choice and voluntary commitment… It begins with the right to say ‘no’.”
Every child who comes to live or study in Tuloy makes the decision everyday to transform his life. He knows that the decision is his key to a better future.
The Drucker Foundation in 1999 acknowledged this Tuloy guiding principle in The Power of Choice, one of the thought articles in their first book in the Wisdom to Action Series, “Leading Beyond the Walls”. The article was written by Stratford Sherman, globally recognized authority on management issues, executive coach, and contributing editor of Fortune Magazine. Sherman co-authored the book, Control Your Destiny or Someone Else Will.
Excerpts from the article:
“People can change — but real change is the outcome of personal choice and voluntary commitment. Force and coercion require tremendous attention and energy yet produce limited results. Genuine transformation, lasting and self-sustaining, is the fruit of freedom. It begins with the right to say ‘no’.”
“The ambitious mission of Tuloy sa Don Bosco is to help Filipino street children — who live almost as savages amid poverty, filth, violence, and crime — remake themselves into productive citizens. Like any organization that seeks to unlock human potential, this group builds on firm convictions. It is affiliated with a Catholic order, the Salesians of Don Bosco, which is named after its founder, St. John Bosco, a nineteenth-century Italian saint devoted to homeless children. Tuloy’s founder and head, Father Marciano Evangelista — everyone calls him Father Rocky — is an energetic, clear-thinking priest with a mystical bent. Not surprisingly, his organization is deeply grounded in faith. At the same time, one of its most potent core beliefs is in the transforming power of free choice. As Father Rocky says, “How can you trust a former street child? Only when he values his choice.He needs opportunities to choose what is good and what is right — so the institution should be permeated with opportunities for these choices. Human potential is almost unlimited, and freedom of choice is the way to bring it out. A person who chooses change will himself tear down the barriers and remove the debris of the past. It takes time. Imposing the law is a shortcut that doesn’t change anything. Behavior changes only when one internalizes the spirit of the law.”