As the 2005 SEA Games winds its way towards the closing ceremonies, many volunteers are readying themselves to go back to their usual schedules. Satisfied that they have done what they could to the best of their abilities and believing they have given their utmost to serve the needs of the athletes and their officials.

For all the brouhaha about the confusion of assignments that plagued the start of the games, the volunteers feel a tingle of nostalgia already. They know that they have become, in one way or the other, a part of a historic event for the Philippines in general and for Cebu in particular. Most of all, they have become transformed by this experience of a lifetime. They have become renewed.

Certainly the volunteers will treasure their short but meaningful stint at the twenty-third Southeast Asian Games. They will treasure it for the friendships found, camaraderie formed and memories made. The volunteers have, without a doubt, become something much better, much wiser, more in tuned with their humanity, with their socio-civic responsibilities, with the undeniable common heritage of Southeast Asians. Over and above all, the volunteers feel that for all its worth, it is uniquely exciting to be a Filipino.

When the final medal tally is released and the last vestiges of the games' presence is removed, all we will have are the memories of such a once in a generation phenomenon. The volunteers will inevitably be brought to ask himself, how did I do? He became a part of another's life, that's for sure. And transformed the face of a nation, of a region, of an event. Certainly, the Twenty-third SEA Games became one notch better because of the hands of a single volunteer. And such hands made the difference between the success of the games and its failure.