(Conclusion)

It takes humility to be able to talk to the poor. It takes looking at the world from the eyes of the poor to be able to talk to the poor. It takes experiencing the lot of the poor to not believe yourself so above the poor that the only way you can talk to them is by ?stooping down to their level,? which is what the candidates do during elections to separate fools from their votes.

But it takes pride as well to talk to the poor. It takes looking at the poor not in their abject state but in their possibilities to be able to talk to the poor. It takes seeing the poor not as objects desperate for gratuity but as subjects who can raise themselves up by their own strength, and demand to do so, to be able to talk to the poor.

Tony Meloto has both in equal measure. He does not romanticize the poor, investing them with a wisdom or heroism that does not spring naturally from deprivation, even if it does so copiously from someone like Josephine. He knows the violence that comes from desperate lives, he knows the brutishness that comes from brutish lives. But he knows as well, having come from the poor as he has, and continuing to live the life of the poor as he does, that the poor are capable of living dignified lives, if not indeed heroic ones, given the means to do so, given the opportunities to do so.

But he does not patronize the poor either, investing them with bodies that allow only for exploitation and souls that, emptied of feeling, allow only for grasping need. Certainly he does not romanticize himself, posing as the savior who will pluck the same poor from the wilderness, like Moses, even if what he does shines so resplendently it often makes him look that way. To the eternal envy of those who see themselves in that role. A devout Christian, Tony believes that God helps only those who help themselves. A decent human being, Tony believes that only the poor can save the poor.

One cannot find a truer measure of how far he has gone here than the indictment of him by the other side of Couples of Christ. That side will never be rich in spirit, even if they manage to get to be so in body. Or that side will ever be poor in life, in every sense of the word ?poor,? in every sense of the word ?life.?

Their accusation, which Tony Meloto might wish to frame and hang on his wall as the highest honor conferred upon him by anyone, was that his project, Gawad Kalinga, was drawing the energies of Couples for Christ which could have been better spent in spiritual guidance rather than physical uplift, in otherworldly concerns rather than in secular ones. An astonishing charge given that Jesus Christ was known to have told his disciples before he left, ?Whatever you do for the least of your brethren, you do for me.?

But truly his detractors have reason to fear. Because Gawad Kalinga has done the most subversive thing of all, not unlike its source of inspiration, Jesus Christ, who once subverted the conventions of his time and place. It has made the weak strong. It has made the dead living. It has made the poor rich?in spirit as much as in body. It has done the unthinkable, which is to make the poor believe in themselves. It has done the atrocious, which is to make the poor see themselves not as lucky beneficiaries?or bovine victims?of gratuity, forever grateful, forever needy, forever prostrate, but as their own saviors, their own deliverers, their own liberators.

It has empowered them.

That simple statement takes on spectacular realities in the Gawad Kalinga settlements. We do not lack for housing projects. We do not lack for low-cost housing from the SSS and GSIS and whatever other institutions using other letters of the alphabet are offering it. We do not lack for low-cost housing from the private sector, some of whose projects, like the ill-fated Cherry Hills Subdivision, were built with the best of intentions but fell victim to the vicissitudes of nature. Even Imelda Marcos had her Ministry of Human Settlements, which produced the BLISS projects which have benefited the lower middle class.

If that were all Gawad Kalinga is, a housing program, then it would be no better than them. As all the economic studies show, housing doesn?t really push back poverty to any great extent. That is not the poor?s greatest need.

But Gawad Kalinga is more than that. Much, much more.

It does build, but not just in physical space, in the rough and tumble of impoverished neighborhoods, also in spiritual space, in the rough and tumble of impoverished minds. It does build, but not just houses, not just a roof and four walls to drag beaten carcasses into from the glare of sun and the lash of rain, also deep wells, where burst out like springs tapped from vast pools of water the poor?s confidence and dignity and pride in their accomplishment.

It is empowering.

The rest of the book outlines the experiences gained from the various settlements. How those settlements rose like a phoenix from moribund surroundings, wretched places home only to vice and violence, and became model communities, patrolled by the very same people who used to be thugs and addicts, held together and kept habitable by the very same people who used to prey on others.

The transformation is astonishing. The transformation is inspiring.

That is where Gawad Kalinga?s true significance lies. It is a project dedicated to building. But it has built more than dwelling places, it has built more than neighborhoods, it has built more than communities even. It has built foundations in the heart, it has raised beams in the mind, it has sprung out arches and gables and turrets in the soul.

If you build it, said the famous line in ?Field of Dreams,? they will come.

Tony Meloto has built it. They have come.