There is a moment from Tuesday, September 1 that I keep replaying. I am standing in the TESDA Leyte Provincial Office, and Provincial Director Engr. Enrico C. Banario is walking toward me with a certificate in his hands — our registration, with iStart's name on it. He hands it over the way you hand a person something you know they have worked for: gently, and with a smile.
Paper is supposed to be light. This one was not. I was holding months of quiet work pressed into a single page — the early mornings, the long documents, the corrections, the pages started over.
And I will be honest with you. Part of me had spent all those months waiting to feel ready enough for a day like this. The day came anyway. Not because the feeling finally arrived — it never really does — but because my team and I started before it did, and kept going.
The week, as I lived it
That was Tuesday, September 1. A pile of documents waited on the table for my signature. I will tell you the truth: I have never been so happy to sign my name that many times.
Beside me was Mary Ann Pante, my co-founder, who has been part of this from the beginning. When the certificate finally changed hands, I was glad she was the one standing next to me. Some yeses belong to more than one person.
Here is the news itself, in one plain sentence: TESDA has officially registered our AI Workplace Operations course, built around the standard I care most about: AI-assisted, human-approved. My team has already written up what the course covers and what comes next. Mine is only what the week felt like.
The Provincial Director and his team did not simply process papers. They made time. They treated our company's dream like it mattered.
And then they shared a meal with my team and me — Jollibee, right on the office meeting table, everyone half-talking training between bites. It was a joy to sit with people who care about what training can do for the young people of our province. I will remember that lunch longer than most meetings.
On Wednesday, September 2, Mary Ann and I drove to the TESDA Region VIII office in Tacloban City, where Regional Director Dan M. Navarro, DPA, received us for a courtesy visit. He shook my hand and asked about the young people the program is for — not about the paperwork. I left that room feeling that our little company had been taken seriously.
On Friday, September 4, Ms. Angelica M. Daza, the EBET Focal who guided our registration, came to Bato, Leyte. She walked through our AI Innovation Lab, where the face-to-face training will happen, and stopped at one of the laptops. I had pictured young people in those chairs so often. Now a TESDA officer stood among them, and I was proud and a little overwhelmed.
That same week, Mary Ann and I visited Municipal Mayor Bryan Nile A. Gertos of Bato, Leyte, at his office on a courtesy call. He welcomed us and was encouraging about what iStart is building for the town's young people. Their futures, talked about inside their own town hall. That moved me.
I will not pretend the week was light. The road to Tacloban City, meetings back to back, days that ran into one another. By Friday I was tired to the bone. It was the right kind of tired.
What the tiredness turned into
I had treated the certificate as a finish line. The week showed me it was a starting line. The yes did not end the work; it opened doors, and every door handed me more work. I am glad of that.
Grateful, first: for a Provincial Director who cleared a table for lunch, a Regional Director who asked about the young people, an EBET Focal who came to Bato herself, a Mayor who opened his door. Not one of those was owed to a small company from Bato.
And excited. Both directors encouraged my team to keep going and were interested in seeing more courses from iStart. A second level of iStart courses is in development: this first one is the foundation, what AI is and how to use it responsibly at work; the next is meant to teach building real things with AI, for self-employment or a better job. What excites me most is what all of us, each from where we stand, could yet do for the young people of Bato and of Leyte.
The people I want to thank
Public servants rarely get thanked in public, so let me do it properly. To Provincial Director Engr. Enrico C. Banario and the TESDA Leyte provincial team: thank you for the welcome, for the guidance, and for lunch. To Ms. Angelica M. Daza, the EBET Focal, who walked my team from the first form to the last signature and then came to Bato on Friday to see the room: thank you for your patience. To Regional Director Dan M. Navarro, DPA: thank you for your time and interest.
To Mayor Bryan Nile A. Gertos of Bato: thank you for opening your door, and for the encouragement. To the partners who made the trip with me, and to my own team, who carried this work day after day — this yes is yours too.
What I want you to take from this
Because this is not really an article about iStart. It is about what that week confirmed for me, and what I want it to say to you.
I did not wait until I felt ready. Readiness was built — one document, one correction, one unglamorous afternoon at a time — and recognition followed it. That is the order.
You have your own version of TESDA day waiting. Maybe it is a first job application. A small-business permit. A licensure exam. A portfolio you keep meaning to finish. And maybe, like me, you have been treating the boring papers as the wall between you and the dream.
They are not the wall. They are the dream — arriving quietly, the way dreams actually arrive: one small, signable step at a time.
You are more capable than you think. I tell that to every learner I meet, and I am telling you now: the person your dream needs is built along the way, by the very steps that feel too small to matter.
As for iStart — the first cohort's details will come in time, and, God willing, this registration will be the first of more. No dates yet, and no promises. Just a direction, and a name on a certificate to remind me the direction is real.
People sometimes ask what the small "i" in iStart stands for. It stands for ownership. The dream is yours; so is the first step. The certificate carries our name — but the name I am really waiting to see is yours, on your own first form, your own first application, your own quiet yes.
Because that is where big dreams start — not on a stage somewhere, but in offices like that one, on days like that one, one signature at a time.
Start before you feel ready. I did. And one Tuesday, months later, a kind man walked across a room and placed the proof in my hands.
— Ethel Morales, CEO & Co-Founder, iStart International