About Us | Our History
It was founded in June 18, 1908 by 25 civic-spirited women led by the wife of the Commanding General at Fort McKinley (later Fort Bonifacio; now the privately-owned global city, the Fort, where another SLMC will be built) when St. Luke's was still a 25-bed facility. Known initially as the Auxiliary Board of the University Hospital*, it became, soon after, the Woman's Board; and eight decades later in 1993, the Women's Board.
The founding women's initial aim was to encourage Filipino women to take up nursing as well as to gain greater recognition for the nursing profession. Almost as soon as the members embraced the concept of volunteer service, the Board took on the greater task of helping the hospital's indigent patients -- and thus committed itself to the hospital's founding mission and original raison d'etre: service to the poorest of the poor and community relations.
During pre-war times, the Board played a highly significant and visible role as it sourced funds through varied means (like the holding of bazaars and garden tea parties, events eagerly anticipated by the Who's Who in society until the early 70s when the annual tea party was scrapped; and the Thrift Shop to which member-volunteers are encouraged to give donations four times a year). It raised funds not only for linen, kitchen utensils, dinnerware and some medicine - but likewise for repairs and reconstruction, the maintenance of the dispensary, the purchase of supplies and a bigger bulk of medicine, the physical expansion and various equipment.
In the mid-70s when the hospital experienced a debilitating and financially crippling crisis, the Women's Board stood true to form as it gave positive and immeasurable contribution. Its role could never be overemphasized as the late Chairman and President William H. Quasha inferred in a letter that he, paying tribute to the Board, wrote in 1997: "...if it were not for the splendid work of the Women's Board, the Hospital could never have survived. I also feel that your work contributes not only in a very material way, but also serves to inspire the entire St. Luke's family."
Today, Quasha's words ring ever true as the Women's Board resumed, in 2001, its library cart service (which lends books and magazines free of charge to in-patients, regardless of social status) and its volunteer service in several departments of the hiospital performing frontline service functions. Its conscientiously persists in looking for innovative ways and means to enhance its role in helping SLMC (a non-stock, non-profit institution that allots yearly 10% of its net income to Social Service) keep true to its founding fathers' legacy amid the challenges of growth, technological advances and rapid movement of market forces.
It has for decades, effectively established goodwill for the hospital as an institution not only among the patients, but also within the St. Luke's family, the peripheral community and the entire nation. Over the years of its servanthood journeying, the Women's Board has been a faithful and proactive member of St. Luke's Medical Center.
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* St. Luke's was called, from 1907 to 1911, University Hospital in honor of American universities that funded its physical expansion. Thus began its gradual and progressive transformation from a mere dispensary established in 1903 by Bishop Brent of the Episcopal Mission to serve the poor, into a hospital admitting both paying and non-paying patients in 1907; and now in the 21st century, an internationally-recognized medical center with state-of-the-art facilities and equipment.
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