Exemplifying Oblate Media public service commitment

ESPERANZA, Sultan Kudarat -- A mainstay contributor of this news website saved the life of a mother and her newly-born child in a quick rescue maneuver here Sunday morning.
Speaking to DXMS-AM Radyo Bida,John Felix Unson, also writer since 1996 of Mindanao Cross, a weekly sister publication of this online news outlet, first saw Bainot Maniging surrounded by panicking people, lying on the sandy side of a highway here, about to give birth unexpectedly.
She and her four children were to travel to Lambayong town, also in Sultan Kudarat, where she first planned to give birth to her fourth child, when she went into sudden labor with painful abdominal spams.
A trained rescuer, Unson, who is staff writer of the Philippine Star, immediately organized an impromptu rescue group from among selected bystanders and rushed Maniging to a municipal birthing clinic in the town center of Esperanza.
Maniging safely delivered her child while on the rear bed of Unson’s Kia Bonggo light truck vehicle that he had personally customized for on-field sudden rescue and emergency actions.
Personnel of the Esperanza birthing clinic immediately extended medical assistance to Maniging, wife of a farmer in Saniag District in
Ampatuan town in Maguindanao.
Saniag is close to the scene of the Nov.23, 2009 Maguindanao massacre.
Some members of the Oblate Media --- the Mindanao Cross and stations of the Notre Dame Broadcasting Corporation --- underwent extensive training on rescue works.
These trainings, which included application of life-saving techniques, were provided free by the National Union of Journalist in the Philippines, by retired personnel of the British Armed Forces enlisted as mentors by the international wire news agency Reuters and by Col. Bernie Langub of the Division Training School of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division in Barangay Sema in Datu Odin Sinsuat town in Maguindanao. So specially customized is Unson’s rescue truck that he had mounted on it personally - as an expert handyman and hobbyist-mechanic - vital rescue tools, a 12-ton power winch made up of a large truck starter motor with load reducer contraptions, a global positioning device, and hidden miniature cameras to record goings-on in areas where he and his colleagues in the Oblate Media cover important events.
When we are out on the field, we don’t just gather news. We also ought to help people in need. We in the Oblate Media are not just journalists. We are also public servants, Unson said.