I have been monitoring the hunger incidence statistics of the Philippines as reported quarterly by SWS for over ten years, as long as I have been involved with the Gawad Kalinga movement. Because I was a late-comer in anti-poverty work at that time, I remained observant but quiet. I thought I could not speak up when I was just like most people I knew then—uninterested, uninvolved and concerned with a million other things.
For five days, the largest and most inspiring volunteer event in Philippines history, the Bayani Challenge, witnessed upwards of 70,000 participants daily. The Bayani Challenge is a joint event of Pilipinas Natin and Gawad Kalinga hosted in 37 sites in 33 provinces. It began on March 23 and ended, the other day, March 27.
I am preparing to go on my first mission abroad for 2013. Since 2008, I have been regularly visiting the United States, deliberately seeking out Filipino-Americans and trying to imbibe their experience of leaving a motherland to adopt another country. I cannot anymore count the number of families who opened their homes to me, much less the greater number of people they gathered so I could expand my network of sources of information. I have organizations and associations to thank as well; they have been many and our interactions have been quite enlightening. While not a Filipino-American, I believe I have met more Filipino-Americans than most of them in the last five years than they since they migrated to America.
For sheer scale and intractability, the issue of informal settlers has left authorities more than stumped. Physically removing shanties and whole communities simply won’t do anymore, not when a staggering one-fourth of Metro Manila is now classified as informal settlements and the urban poor constitute about 20 percent of the Philippines’ total population. Forced evictions have only led to violent incidents between lawmen assigned to enforce demolition orders and the desperate residents intent on preventing their homes from being torn down.
After one long month visiting the United States and Canada, it is so good to be home. No doubt, there are modernities and opportunities that only developed countries can give. No doubt, traveling in countries with vast lands, with lakes where the whole Philippines can fit, can be quite alluring. And staying in cities like [...]
It’s a far cry from the days when each time you left the country, you were tempted to identify yourself as Thai or Vietnamese or Malaysian, out of shame to be Filipino. Which not a few overseas Filipino workers and foreign-bound Filipinos actually did in Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s time.
Today is the day we toast another Filipino champion, a more impressive one that has been with us for some time now but has not gotten the same adulation as Manny Pacquiao. That champion has fought a foe far more fearsome than Floyd Mayweather, one that has never been beaten, one in fact that has TKO-ed every champion we’ve put up against it. That foe is poverty. And the one champion we’ve got that has locked horns with it, and will probably win against it, is Gawad Kalinga.
We are capable of heroic imagination, we are capable of heroic action. We have shown it, we have done it. Our only problem is sustaining it.
Conrado de Quiros’ April 5 column (“Resurrection”) reminds Filipinos that we can resurrect our old value of “bayanihan” or cooperation. Gawad Kalinga (GK) is showing the world how we do it. GK deserves to receive the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship.
Little heralded, or even known, in this country was an event that took place halfway across the globe last week. That was the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship, “the Davos of doing good,” which culminated in the presentation of the Skoll Awards at the New Theater in Oxford, England. The awards are the Nobel Prize of sorts for social entrepreneurship and carry the same cash prize of $1 million. Four organizations won it this year. One of them is Gawad Kalinga.
I thought that England would have cheaper gas prices. The past two days as a visitor in London, however, has taught me that oil producing countries do not always subsidize what their people consume. Gas here is P100 per liter and they have British Petroleum! I also thought that England would be a model of [...]
If there’s café au lait (coffee with milk), there is now what I would call café au social innovation. The latter is not a coffee drink per se but a café (excuse my French-English coinage), a place to be, a showcase of “a new generation of social entrepreneurs who aim to create businesses that leave no one behind.” Here one could, of course, also drink coffee—and more.
