Cecilia Lionag

lionag@tolerance-net.org

Cecilian Lionag was born in 1955 in Pangasinan, a northern province in the Philippines. She graduated with a degree of Bachelor of Science in Social Work from the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City and is a licensed social worker. She is a Master of Arts (MA) Candidate of the Clinical and Counseling Psychology Graduate Program of the Ateneo de Manila University.

Cecilia has been a political activist since 1972. Together with her husband, Geronimo Pasetes, she was arrested by the Philippine military, detained and held incommunicado for almost two days on suspicion for subversive activities. She was released without charges for humanitarian reasons while her husband was charged and subsequently released after the court dismissed charges brought against him.

From 1976 to 1990, she was a community organizer of urban and rural poor communities. In 1992, upon her release, she joined the People’s Well-being Center Inc. as a counselor-psychologist and later became Program Directress. She designs and facilitates sessions on Personal Growth, Wholeness and Well-being; Discovering and Healing the Inner Child; and Psycho-Spiritual Nurturing. She is also involved in the formation program of several religious congregations as counselor/therapist, resource person and seminar facilitator.. She works with the Benigno Aquino Foundation as a resource person in their Human Rights Education project for public safety officers handling the module on Human Rights and Spirituality.

Presently she is Director for Services of the Wholistic, Empowering, Loving Liberating, (WELL) Being Foundation Inc., a partner of the Benigno Aquino Foundation, Institute for People Power and Democracy. She is also a consultant and resource person of the Families of Victims of Involuntary Disappearance (FIND), an organization of families of desaparecidos, for its Rehabilitation and Welfare Program.
She is mother to two teen-aged children.
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