NOELLE DE JESUS TELLS HOW ONE FAMILY SPENT A VACATION LEARNING, WITH THE HELP OF THE ORGANIZATION GAWAD KALINGA, HOW GIVING IS OFTEN MORE REWARDING THAN RECEIVING
There was neither a stretch of sun-kissed white sand nor views of the sea against blue horizon. The children didn’t lounge about in a cushy air-conditioned hotel room, watching cartoons on a flat-screen television. No, this was a different kind of vacation. On this day, Margo Encarnacion and her three sons — Diego, 12, Mateo, 9, and Emilio, 7 — were in Manila not to be pampered but to lend a helping hand. They were volunteers for the organization Gawad Kalinga (GK) in the building of a house for a family in Payatas, a poor community in Quezon City.
For the past seven years, the Encarnacion family have lived in Singapore, where the easy lifestyle makes it difficult for young people especially to imagine the life of hardship and poverty that so many in the South-East Asian region face on a daily basis. Being the progressive parents they are, Margo and her husband Mino constantly welcome opportunities to show their three sons the real world, striving to instill in them the value and the responsibility of giving something back to the community. In the past, this included activities like donating books, clothes and old toys to orphanages; playing bingo one afternoon in a nursing home; using the boys’ money for microfinance on www.kiva.org as well as organizing Christmas parties for domestic helpers in Singapore during which the kids would serve as their hosts.
While the family has enjoyed many travels around the world, the couple always seeks to balance out the children’s view of the world. When Diego, their eldest son, was required to keep a poverty journal for school (the point was to draw the students’ attention to world hunger, child labor and disease due to poverty), Margo felt it was all too theoretical. So on a recent trip to Manila, she included an experience that would truly show her sons the reality of poverty while giving them a chance to be of immediate, practical help.
BUILDING HOMES FOR THE POOR
Margo was already involved as a volunteer, helping to get the various Filipino communities in Singapore involved in Gawad Kalinga’s mission of making the Philippines slum-free and squatter-free, so every Filipino has a home. After all, this is the first step toward fighting poverty and the violence that frequently arises because of it. She lost no time in finding out what she and her sons could do in a concrete way. “I told the boys that this was a chance, not just to understand poverty first-hand but to actually roll up our sleeves and actually do physical work for the poor.”
That said, part of her was, of course, slightly apprehensive.
“I spoke to my boys about being sensitive to the world they were going to enter. That I didn’t want to hear ‘I’m bored’ or ‘When are we going home?’ or ‘Can we go to McDonalds after this?”
Margo took all three boys, her mother and her aunt, as well as the Gawad Kalinga reps to visit Payatas — also known as Gawad Kalinga Molave — a village adopted by the Ateneo University. Their car drove in traffic through a network of garbage-strewn, narrow streets. However once they reached Payatas, the family was surprised to find the actual area already fairly clean and neat. The work of GK was already evident.
Their day’s itinerary involved helping beautify the facades of some homes that had just been constructed. “We weren’t handed cement and hollow blocks,” says Margo. “Instead we spent a morning hard at work painting four houses.”
WORKING SIDE BY SIDE
It was a very rewarding experience, as her three boys set themselves to the task at hand, after meeting some of the community’s families and their children, including other young boys just like Diego, Mateo and Emilio. With brushes or rollers, the three boys as well as the other volunteers worked hard in the heat of the morning.
“We all enjoyed the experience even as the paint landed on our clothes, hair, and shoes,” says Margo.
By the afternoon, there were two coats of primer paint on four small houses — a feat that made Margo and her sons stand proud.
When the job was done, the volunteers were invited to lunch at the home of Aling Melinda, whose brood is one of the Gawad Kalinga families living in Payatas. Margo was touched by the woman’s generosity, and of course, could not say no. Aling Melinda welcomed them into her home, serving a tasty lunch of fried fish, chicken curry and Coke Zero.
“We had come in our chauffer-driven, air-conditioned cars, with cameras in tow, ready to give, yet we were on the receiving end from these kind people,” says Margo. At the end of the day, the Encarnacions felt they had received much more than they gave. As a result of the experience, they are now more committed to getting others to help out and contribute not just their money but also their time, to Gawad Kalinga’s important mission.
As for this unconventional holiday, Margo says it’s not going to be a one-time experience for them. In fact, it is something that groups other than families can do together to bond. Organizations, schools, office workers, and even friends can seize the opportunity and help Gawad Kalinga communities all over the Philippines.
“We plan to come back and be part of another build,” says Margo. After all, their experience at a Gawad Kalinga build made for a truly enriching alternative holiday.
The next Gawad Kalinga build in Metro Manila is on January 2 and 3, 2009. If you and your group want to spend a morning or a day doing something worthwhile, all you need to do is call tel:+ 63 (2) 718 1738.
WHAT IS GAWAD KALINGA?
Translated, the two words mean, “to give care.” The organization Gawad Kalinga (GK) was founded in 1995, by Ramon Magsaysay awardee Antonio “Tony” Meloto, and thousands of volunteers from across the world. The organization’s mission: to uplift the lives of Filipino people by building homes and launching educational, health and livelihood programs in impoverished communities.
Meloto did what the government was unable to do because of lack of support from the private sector. He partnered with political leaders and work began with the community of Bagong Silang in Caloocan City, also the largest squatter relocation area in the Philippines.
More than a decade on, GK not only builds homes, it builds sustainable communities. The organization intends to build 7,000 communities by end-2010 (to date, they have assisted 1,700 squatter communities in the country) and has extended links to other developing countries. GK is a testament to the great power of the human spirit and the good that can be achieved when people get together and act generously.
For more information about taking part in a Gawad Kalinga build, making a contribution to the GK mission, or finding GK contacts in the Philippines and other countries, call tel:+ 63 (2) 718 1738 or visit their website, www.gawadkalinga.org
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