MARIA RACHEL JIMENEZ ARENAS, a Member of Congress in the Philippines, was elected to the House of Representatives for the Third District of the Province of Pangasinan, in the 19th Congress. She is the Chairperson of the Committee on Foreign Affairs as well as the Chairperson of the House of Representatives Panel Legislative Oversight Committee on the Visiting Forces Agreement, and also a Member of the Congressional Oversight on the Official Development Assistance. She is the concurrent Vice Chairperson of the Committees on Appropriation, Transportation and Health. She was first elected in 2007 and 2010 to the 14th & 15th Congress, respectively. In early 2017, she was appointed as Chairperson of the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB), a national agency under the Office of the President. She began her political career shortly after taking graduate courses at the Harvard Kennedy School of Harvard University and completing her Global Master of Arts Program in the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.
Rachel is an advocate of community empowerment as a means to achieve genuine, sustainable, and inclusive development. The hallmark of her political career is her direct and dynamic partnership with the 304 Barangays of the Third District, the largest in Pangasinan. With this close collaboration, through regular dialogue and consultation, she transformed her District into a progressive, prosperous, and peaceful community. She continues to innovate the ways by which she reaches out to and interacts with her constituents using social media and bringing opportunities and government services more accessible to them. She devotes her public service in the pursuit of legislative reforms and initiatives that facilitate better access to more opportunities for her constituents, in particular, and the vulnerable and marginalized sectors, in general. She believes that genuine socio-economic and political development should be inclusive and sustainable; that it is the duty of the government to ensure that every Filipino is able to put food on their table, a roof over their head, and has free access to quality education, basic health services, availability of nondiscriminatory employment, and equal protection of the law and social justice.
In Congress, she used her office to enable responsive and relevant governance, and be an effective agent for the grant of tens of thousands of scholarships, medical assistance, livelihood opportunities, construction of school buildings, farm-to-market roads and bridges, irrigation and waterway systems, agricultural and farming equipment and inputs. She has filed several national and local bills and resolutions, which include the creation of an information and technology hub in every district, the rollover of unused data allocation, magna carta for seafarers, and for non-uniformed personnel, better compensation for barangay health workers, to name a few.
A graduate of De La Salle University with a degree in Bachelor of Arts Major in Political Science and Japan Studies, Rachel also finished a certificate course on “Negotiation and Dispute Resolution” at the Institute of Politics, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. In 2003, she completed her Global Master of Arts Program at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Rachel is the only daughter of former Deputy Speaker Rose Marie “Baby” Arenas.
In her first term as a legislator, Rachel was honored as the Most Outstanding Congresswoman in 2007. Because of her dedication and notable contributions as a public servant, she was also nominated as one of the Ten Outstanding Young Men and Women (TOYM) in 2011. As a testament to her continuous commitment to humanitarian service, she has been elected Governor of the Philippine Red Cross for almost a decade already, up to this time.