A lot of laudable deeds have been attributed to the national hero Dr. Jose P. Rizal as a novelist, artist, poet, lover, martyr – you name it – and made them great.

He was even a “product endorser” of sort that inspired the institutionalization of the sweepstakes in the country, and he did it while in exile in Dapitan in 1892.

Of course, there had been lotteries in the country as early as 1833 ran by the Empresa de Reales Loteria Españolas de Filipina but it was not until Rizal won the princely prize of R6,200.00 that the Spanish government realized its prime importance to the community: Jose Rizal, the visionary nationalist, donated the full amount of the lottery money to an educational program in the locality that hailed him for his effort to promote human welfare and philanthropy.

And that was the early beginning of the long, glorious history of the sweepstakes as a humanitarian institution in the country.

In 1932, the first sweepstakes draw was conducted to support the government’s sports program and then expanded it to fund the Anti-Tuberculosis Society’s projects, and in 1935 President Manuel L. Quezon signed into law Act 4130 to create the National Charity Sweepstakes.

This year, the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office is observing its 75th Anniversary celebration with a nationwide medical, dental, feeding and information- based mission, for the expected two million patients attended to by some 100,000 volunteers in some 2,000 medical mission sites.

The mission launched last Sunday dubbed as “100 Percent in One Day” covers the 41,995 barangays all over the country.

“This is a first-of-its-kind in the Philippines that provides fast access to the medical and charity care from the PCSO and its partners to poor Filipinos all over the country in one day,” PCSO General Manager Rosario Uriarte said, explaining that the project was designed as an important feature of PCSO’s 75th Anniversary celebration.

As planned, last Sunday’s nationwide activities were a demonstration of PCSO’s determined effort to fulfill its stated goals of serving the people’s needs – particularly the very poor and the least capable of taking care of themselves and their health.

Such activities could only be undertaken by a massive mobilization of manpower and resources dedicated to the service of human needs. That the PCSO management was able to assemble such big groups of volunteers among the country’s medical practitioners and allied services, is a tribute to the growing confidence that the office enjoys and continues to win in the pursuit of its humanitarian goals.

And it is as it should be.

After all, the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office owes it to the people to return to them in terms of free services the widespread support they are giving the office.

Without public support – vigorous and continuous – PCSO cannot hope to be what it is today.

In the same token, without credible management such humanitarian undertakings that it is pursuing now to alleviate human condition would not be possible at all.

That the PCSO has attained what it is today must, first of all, be credited to the national leadership for encouraging the expansion of its horizon towards more enhanced benefits to the disadvantaged sector of Philippine society.

Happy 75th Anniversary, PCSO! (zhern_218@yahoo.com)

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(Editor's note: Hern Zenarosa is a former Director of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office from 1971 to 1986.)