WHAT WAS formerly known as the Ateneo Student Leaders Assembly (ASLA) is now a department under the Sanggunian.
The Department of Student Leadership and Development recently became the new home of ASLA. Two more arms, Training and Development (T&D) and Dare It Forward (DIF) were also added to the department.
“After much consultation, we saw what our needs are, and the needs of the [Office of Student Activities] (OSA) and Sanggu. It was a clear match that we were meant to be a department under Sanggu,” said DSLD Chairperson Josh Tan.
Training and Development head Henson Lee Yu said that starting last year, ASLA has been looking for a more concrete structure to belong to which they found in Sanggu.
Tan said that what makes them really fit for a Sanggu department is their structure. He said that unlike the Council of Organization and OSA’s training method, they teach leadership as a personal journey.
“[COA and OSA] are more [into] organizational development … When we train student groups, we try to develop their passions, we don’t deal with anything technical. With ASLA, we deal with you individually,” he said.
ASLA is a student leadership program that hosts an annual all-expense paid leadership congress. It began as a Sanggu project in 2002 but was formalized into Sanggu last year.
New arms
During Recruitment Week, DSLD accepted applicants for T&D and DIF. They also accepted new members for their Communications and Information Technology (CommIT) team. Applications for the 8th ASLA Congress was extended until July 24.
T&D provides leadership training to different student groups while DIF reiterates the value of everyday leadership through simple acts. CommIT deals with communication and information technology projects such as promotions.
Tan said that since DSLD is a new department under Sanggu, currently, all members in all of the three arms are ASLAns. “Because of recruitment, we’re looking into bringing more people to the department.”
Ripple of ASLA
“[DSLD] really started under the spirit of ASLA, and we’ve rippled out as a department to provide leadership formation to more students in the Loyola Schools,” said ASLA Program Director Noreen Bautista.
Tan said that they accepted other students into the other arms of DSLD because they want to have a wider reach in the studentry.
“Leadership is universal [and] … the vision of ASLA is to create a culture of leadership in every Atenean but because [ASLA] is an all-expense paid Congress, we can’t bring all 8000 students,” he said.
Bautista agreed, “We’re happy that we’re already institutionalized in Sanggu. That enables us to further reach a lot of people in terms of leadership.”
“We envision the time that when people say that you are an Atenean, you have a notion of leadership which carries the values of a servant leader,” Lee Yu said.
Bigger challenge
Bautista said that being part of Sanggu gives a lot of advantages for DSLD but it also poses a greater challenge for them. “We are stable [now] in terms of institution, funding and positioning … but it’s an increased responsibility because we [need] to do more things… [than what we] usually do,” she said.
Lee Yu also said that it gives them a greater scope because they are now dealing with the whole Ateneo compared to only a selected number of students who participate in the ASLA Congress annually.
Rish Mandhiyan, ASLA alumni relations head, said that Sanggu enables them to get the perspective of the student body and to know how they should approach the students. “To some extent, it restricts DSLD, but that restriction gives it the direction.”
“We’re very willing, and we have been accepting these responsibilities in our new home, the Sanggunian,” Bautista said.
