International Women’s Day 2026 Tribute · Give to Gain
- Hilda Arenas
- Apr 6
- 6 min read
Because every seed planted returns a harvest
This year’s theme — Give to Gain — stopped me the moment I read it. Not because it was new. But because I had already lived it.
Three women had shown me, long before anyone gave it a name, exactly what it means to give without calculation, without keeping score, without ever asking what would come back to them. What came back to them is this. These words. This life. This tribute.
I am a mother, a writer, a community leader, and a founder. None of it — not a single chapter - arrived without women. There are more women who have walked beside me, believed in me, and shaped me in ways I carry every day — and this tribute is for all of them. But today, I want to begin with three whose names I need to say out loud.
“No woman rises alone. The women who shaped me never asked for recognition. That is exactly why I will never stop giving it.”
The Women Who Made Me. Not every mentor announces herself. Sometimes she simply arrives — as a mother, a teacher, a distinguished diplomat and inspiring leader — and changes the entire course of someone’s story. These three women changed mine.
01. IN MEMORIAM · ALWAYS PRESENT
My Nanay Linda
Mother of Four · Primary School Teacher · The First and Greatest Love
She was a teacher by profession and a nurturer by nature - and she never once separated the two. She was also my very first teacher of the English language, long before any classroom. She insisted on it at home — gently, consistently, as only a teacher-mother could. Looking back, that insistence was one of the greatest gifts she ever gave me.
Nanay Linda gave herself to her classroom and to her four children with the same wholehearted devotion. She was kind, not occasionally, not conditionally, but always — the kind of constant, quiet kindness that does not announce itself but simply is. Present in every moment. Felt in every room. She made every child around her feel seen, worthy, and deeply loved.
She left this world when I was ten years old. Forty-four years have passed. I am still learning from her.
That is the measure of a life well given. Not the years lived, but the lessons that outlast them. Nanay Linda’s values did not retire when she did. They travelled. They crossed oceans. They built communities she never knew existed, in countries she never set foot in. They are still at work today — in every act of patience, every instinct to show up, every moment of warmth offered to a stranger who needed it.
Give to Gain — She never asked what she would gain. She simply gave — her time, her heart, her whole self — to her children and the students in her care. Her harvest? Still growing. Still visible. Still us.
“Everything I am rooted in, I learned from you first. I carry you, Nanay Linda. Always.”
02. THE TEACHER WHO GAVE ME A VOICE
Mrs Linda Manalad née Burguillos
English Teacher · Dominican School, Dagupan City, Pangasinan, Philippines
Some teachers teach a subject. Miss Burguillos taught a future.
She stood in front of a classroom in Dominican School and gave her students something far greater than grammar and composition. She gave them a love of language — a living, breathing belief that words have power, that English spoken well is a key that opens doors the world will try to keep shut, and that every student sitting in front of her was worth every ounce of her time and expertise.
She taught the way great teachers always do: with patience, with genuine care, and with an almost stubborn insistence that the student in front of her could go further than they imagined. She did not just prepare her students for examinations. She prepared them for the world.
I was one of those students. After high school, I moved to Scotland with my siblings, built a career in English — speaking boardrooms and international networks, and now write for Roots and Wings Magazine, which reaches a global readership, while leading communities across Europe. I have never forgotten the woman in that classroom in Dominican School who made the English language feel like a gift worth treasuring for a lifetime.
Miss Burguillos could not have known what she was building. She simply gave - lesson by lesson, correction by correction, belief by belief — and trusted that it mattered. It mattered more than she will ever fully know.
Give to Gain — She gave a love of language to a girl who had no idea what that gift would one day make possible. Every word written, every door the English language ever opened - it began in her classroom.
“I write today because you taught me how, Ma’am. And I write with joy because you made that joy possible. Salamat.”
03. THE DIPLOMAT WHO RAISED THE STANDARD
H.E. Ambassador Hjayceelyn M. Quintana
Ambassador · Diplomat · The Definition of Leading with Honour · A Cherished Friend
There are diplomats by career and appointment. And then there are those who lead to lift others. H.E. Ambassador Hjayceelyn M. Quintana has always been the latter.
To know Ambassador Quintana is to know the very best of the Philippines — its heart, its excellence, its grace under pressure. Her creative mind sets standards other nations aspire to. Filipinos look to her with pride. Non-Filipinos with admiration. She carries the Philippines into every space she enters — its culture, its creativity, its trade, its story — making the case, quietly but powerfully, that the Philippines belongs at every table and in every conversation. She does not confine her impact to the powerful. She reaches everyone because she has never forgotten that true leadership is not about the room you command. It is about the people you bring with you.
She does not lead with noise. She leads with presence — the kind felt the moment she enters a room and remembered long after she has left it. She uplifts without diminishing. She challenges without breaking. She is the same woman in every room — steady, warm, and completely present. What makes her truly extraordinary is not her title. It is what she does with it.
She gives her time, her expertise, her compassion, and her presence to every person she serves — wholly, without reservation, without ever making them feel they are anything less than the reason she is there. The leaders she has mentored will carry her example into rooms she may never enter herself. That is the true reach of her leadership. That is what it means to give in a way that gains for generations.
She does not wait for the Philippines to be seen. She makes it impossible to be overlooked.
Give to Gain - She gave a standard. The gain is a generation of people who aspire to it - in every country, in every room, carrying her example forward.
“You showed me that power and compassion are not opposites. In the right hands, they are one and the same.”
Give. And Look at What Is Gained. Three women. Three different kinds of giving. One life - transformed by all of it.
Nanay Linda gave her whole heart to four children and a classroom, without ever knowing how far those seeds would travel. Mrs Manalad gave her love of language to a girl in Pangasinan, without knowing the writer she was quietly building. Ambassador Quintana gives herself to her people every single day, with the certainty of someone who has always understood that this is simply what service requires, and without knowing the community leader in me, she helped build.
None of them asked what they would receive. Look at what was gained.
To every woman reading this — in Ireland, across Europe, in the Philippines, and every corner of this world — you are already someone’s Nanay Linda. Someone’s Mrs Manalad. Someone’s Ambassador Quintana. You may not see it yet. But somewhere, in ways you may never fully know, your giving is already becoming someone else’s everything.
Give freely. Give fully. Trust the harvest.
I am because of them — and because of every woman who has ever believed in me, walked beside me, or simply showed up when it mattered. I will make sure that means something, every single day.
Mabuhay ang kababaihan. Long live the women.
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