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At 25, Tracy Ramonida, a daughter who once counted on the tarp over her roof as shelter and the two-month grant from the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) as lifeline. Now serving as a Municipal Link for MOO–Las Nieves, Tracy’s story is a quiet example of perseverance, faith, and the power of service.
“I am truly grateful for this opportunity to stand before you today,” she told an audience of beneficiaries. “Ako si Tracy Ramonida, taga Bading, Butuan City. Sauna, ako pang mama ang ga-attend ug FDS; karon ako na ang ga-FDS.” The memory of that first Family Development Session (FDS) she led — tears, embraces, and a room full of shared hopes — remains one of the most vivid moments of her journey.

Tracy’s childhood was threaded with everyday struggles. The family lived in a squatter area where the floor was sometimes nothing more than packed earth, and sections of the roof were covered with tarpaulin. Her mother sold vegetables and her father worked as a laborer; together they rose before dawn to prepare food and do market chores, leaving small change for their children’s school lunches. “Lisod jud kaayo ang among kahimtang,” Tracy recalled in Cebuano — their hardship was real, ongoing, and shared by many families in similar neighborhoods.
When the 4Ps program arrived, it brought more than cash assistance — it brought structure and expectations. Tracy’s mother kept receipts, completed program assignments, and attended every Family Development Session without fail. She would tune into radio lessons assigned by the program and write down what she learned, a discipline Tracy still carries today. “That kind of faithfulness inspired me so much,” Tracy said. “If a person is committed and willing to be helped, the program can transform lives.”

Education became the family’s pathway forward. The grants and later the Tertiary Education Subsidy (TES) helped Tracy and her siblings stay in school when resources were scarce. Tracy’s hard work produced results: she was a consistent honor student — 1st Honorable Mention in elementary, an Academic Achiever in high school, and High Honors in Senior High.
In 2022, she graduated Cum Laude with a Bachelor of Science in Social Work, and in September of that year she passed the Social Work Licensure Exam.
“By God’s grace,” she said, “our success today is not only ours, but also theirs,” referring to the program and the staff who supported her family. Yet Tracy’s path to public service did not begin with a straight line. Her first job in government was with DSWD Northern Mindanao as a Community Empowerment Facilitator under KALAHI-CIDSS in Kitaotao, Bukidnon. That experience, she believes, was part of a larger calling. When an opportunity came to serve as a Municipal Link for 4Ps, the transition felt like destiny fulfilled.
The first time she addressed families as a Municipal Link, Tracy could barely hold back her emotions. “I couldn’t hold back my tears, and they cried with me too,” she remembers. Her early years listening alongside her mother, copying notes into a little notebook, attending every meeting, made the moment electric.

Today, when she facilitates an FDS, Tracy ensures nobody leaves empty-handed: not just with information, but with renewed values, practical tips, and the reassurance that they are not alone. “Make your home a little heaven on earth; where your children can feel love, peace, happiness, safety, and protection,” she tells the families she serves.

Tracy’s story is as much about small, consistent acts as it is about milestones. Her mother’s habit of carefully storing receipts and writing assignments; her parents’ early-morning grind at the market; the way the family stretched every peso, these everyday disciplines planted seeds of perseverance and hope. Those seeds bore fruit not only in Tracy’s academic honors and professional qualifications, but in the changed fortunes of her siblings: both now studying Criminology at Saint Joseph Institute of Technology, with one nearing graduation.

Yet Tracy refuses to frame her rise as purely an individual achievement. “I am living proof that the program works when paired with determination and faith,” she said, thanking DSWD Caraga, Municipal Links who once guided her parents, partners, and stakeholders. “My life is a testimony of what it means to go from ‘receiving help to giving help.”

In the faces of the families she meets, Tracy sees echoes of her own past — the hungry looks, the worn notebooks, the bowed backs that still dream. Those reminders shape how she works: with empathy, with patience, and with the conviction that dignity matters as much as assistance. For her, success isn’t only passing exams or earning titles; it’s the slow, steady climb away from daily survival toward stability and choice.

As she walks the small streets of Las Nieves and listens to people’s stories, Tracy carries a practical faith. “The Lord has been so good to us,” she says, crediting God and her parents’ sacrifices for the path she now walks. Her message to other young people is simple and grounded: take the help offered, stay disciplined, hold fast to education, and when you can, give back.
The roof of her childhood home may have once been a patchwork of tarp and hope, but the future Tracy helps build is sturdier. Step by step, she reminds beneficiaries, households can move forward: “layo pa pero layo layo na sab ang among naabtan,” she laughs softly, borrowing her own family joke that once sounded impossible: someday the dirt floor would be tiled, there would be separate rooms, there would be food to eat out. Those small dreams, once jokes, have begun to come true.

Tracy Ramonida’s story is not an endpoint but a promise: when community support meets the discipline of ordinary families and the faith to keep going, transformation follows. And in every Family Development Session she leads, that promise is passed on, a receipt tucked into a notebook, a lesson learned, a life nudged toward its better tomorrow.
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