Mia C. Ventura has come full circle. 

She created, she nurtured, and she transformed. 

Interestingly, her personal and professional lives metamorphosed into a fusion of fulfillment and commitment to children of a lesser god she and her family helped attain their dreams, too.

Hers is the story of a retired yet contented career woman who spent 58 of her 78 years living out of a suitcase. 

It all started in Camalaniugan, Cagayan.

From as early as seven years old until she finished her studies at 21, Ventura juggled home and school.

From St. Paul College of Tuguegarao to University of the Philippines-Diliman she lived in boarding houses and dormitories.

Having an appreciative partner is key to managing the constraints of career and family, two demanding roles for a woman. She was a young mother who pursued her dreams simultaneously. 

Her 40 years as a career service officer of the Commission on Population in the Cagayan Valley region until her eventual promotion as Deputy Executive Director of her agency manifested her kind of leadership and commitment. She had become a woman of the world.

It was therefore fitting for Ventura to be designated to deliver the Philippine Statement on Population during the UN Commemoration of the 15th anniversary of the International Conference on Population and Development in New York in 2009. It was a ten-minute fame on a world stage not only for herself but for her country, a rare feat for a Cagayano.

She came in as a government worker in 1970 when population control and related global issues were just beginning to unleash its frightening head. The true-blue Ilocana was instrumental in the development of programs and projects for the population we know today. 

As the first female regional director, she scaled mountains to be with the indigenous people of Region 2, including Ifugao and Kalinga-Apayao to preach population control and of course, introduce condoms in which she earned the tag  “Condom Queen".

Not content with what she was doing as a population officer alongside her being a doting mother to two children and wife to her husband, she presented her research proposal about Tuguegarao’s laundrywomen before the 20th Summer Seminar on Population held at East-West Population Institute, Honolulu, Hawaii in 1989. 

Her paper was accepted in the international academic competition by a distinguished board of scientists. She recorded another feat for herself and all the women she represented.

When she became the President of Zonta Club of Tuguegarao under the program ‘Women Helping Other Women,’ she thought of organizing the laundrywomen of Tuguegarao, a rather novelty idea at the time.  

“I want to increase their income-earning capacity and to increase their knowledge of safeguarding their health and the family," Ventura said.

By this time, the owner-manager of the former Cagayan Milk Candy, an iconic Cagayan product, has researched extensively the plight of the laundrywomen of Tuguegarao. The women went to the Pinacanauan River, both along Barangays Riverside and Bagumbayan, at the break of dawn and washed clothes under the heat of the Tuguegarao sun, drenched themselves as they washed in the flowing ‘Arapang (ripples) and eat lunch all by themselves. The clothes are bleached and dried on the river rocks where they fold them before going home after lunch or at sundown, depending on the volume of laundry they get.

The women looked older than their real age, most were sunburned with poor dentures and the majority had many children. She led her club in the provision of soap-making training for the women where they learned to produce their own. She turned them into entrepreneurs. 

Ventura initiated the installation of water pumps in selected areas where the women were free to wash near these pumps, thus, plucking them from the heat of the sun. By this time, she already linked them to hospitals, clinics, and hotels for dirty linens and assured jobs for underprivileged women. 

Unknowingly, she won another brand from the women she served as “Laundry Queen”.

When she thought retirement would slow her down, she surprised herself when she transformed into a published author with two books in a row written during the pandemic. These days, she is busy collecting family memorabilia like framed photos and already 94 albums, furniture, and anything of sentimental value. Some of them are now functional parts of her house. 

At the roof deck of their three-story residential house, Ventura looks into the impressive Tuguegarao skyline at dusk, a vantage point for another look at the old and new Tuguegarao City.

For Ventura, it’s not the years in her life but the life she has been living these years. (OTB/ADS/PIA Region 2 with reports from Benjie S. De Yro)