Soldier Honors Mother Through Nonprofit Organization

Photo By Spc. Luciano Alcala | Joshua Sembrano walks through a Filipino community and coordinates with others. (Courtesy photo by The Ruth Sembrano Foundation)  

FORT STEWART, GEORGIA, UNITED STATES

10.20.2023

Story by Pfc. Luciano Alcala 

50th Public Affairs Detachment

Cpt. Joshua Sembrano is the company commander of the 3rd Battalion, 69th Armor Regiment. He is responsible for providing the resources to his company of approximately 140 Soldiers and enabling them to carry out their mantra as the “Tip of the Spear,” who provide support in the forefront of the Army’s most modern battalion.
Besides leading Soldiers at the 3rd Infantry Division at Fort Stewart, Georgia, Sembrano also leads a non-profit organization as the president and founder of the Ruth Sembrano Foundation, an organization that helps low income communities in the Philippines. The organization is his way of honoring his Filipino heritage and his late mother’s legacy who was an esteemed and cherished member of the community.

Sembrano is a first generation Filipino, born in Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey. He graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point with a bachelor’s degree in business management in 2018. When Sembrano was a freshman at the academy, his mother, Ruth Penales Sembrano, passed away.
It was a difficult time for Sembrano as he mourned the loss of his mother, but eventually his grief turned into gratitude and he realized how fortunate he was to have someone who supported him and helped him reach success.
“She gave up everything to making sure my sisters and I had everything we needed to be successful and chase after our goals. She was our number one supporter,” said Sembrano.
He was inspired by his mothers humanity and sought to create an organization that could provide resources and a pathway to a better future for those less fortunate, just as his mother had done for him.
“The Ruth Sembrano Foundation was a way for me to say thank you to my mom, honor her legacy, but also give a Ruth Sembrano to someone who might not have that,” Sembrano said.
Sembrano launched the Ruth Sembrano Foundation in August 2022 but the path to establishing an officially recognized nonprofit organization was not an easy one.
He began the process for setting up the foundation in 2021 but was challenged by restrictions caused by the COVID 19 pandemic.
“Getting all the paperwork and requirements to be a fully registered nonprofit organization in the United States took months, months longer than what we needed to do,” said Sembrano. “People were isolated, people were quarantined and that just brought up how important it was to create and leverage relationships with organizations who are already in the communities we need to be in.”
Sembrano relied on his education from West Point and his military background to overcome the challenges he faced.
“My people’s needs and the needs of my battalion are at the forefront of my mind,” Sembrano said. “As a logistics officer, I spent a considerable amount of time thinking about what my organization needs to be successful, and how I can get that to them. Those lessons learned and the ups and downs that go along with it have prepared me to tackle the challenges that I’ve experienced, running this nonprofit.”

Now, Sembrano focuses on his organization’s mission, to improve access to quality education and healthcare in impoverished communities within the Central Philippines by providing crucial modern equipment and supplies to enable local schools and medical clinics to better serve their communities. He coordinates with his tightly knit team to identify which resources are needed in impoverished Philippine communities.
“For our education project, we met with teachers and they told us the struggles of teaching 350 kids in three classrooms, so we decided to look at a portion of their school that was destroyed and rebuild that portion and connect them to technologies to ensure that these kids had a shot at being successful in the future,” he said.
In the future Sembrano hopes to continue to expand his organization to include other countries besides the Philippines. He strives to continue to help others and give back the way he was raised to help.
“When we run this clinic, and we run these schools, or we enable these people to run these clinics and schools, it allows the community to come together as a family and enjoy these services together. So it gets them again, a step closer to breaking the cycle of poverty to have them live a happier and more successful life.

• Date Taken: 10.20.2023
• Date Posted: 10.20.2023 17:13
• Story ID: 456251
• Location: FORT STEWART, GEORGIA, US
• Hometown: HASBROUCK HEIGHTS, NEW JERSEY, US