Recently 5 work colleagues and myself had the wonderful opportunity to travel to the Philippines and work for a week with International Care Ministries (ICM), an incredible organisation that aims to help the poorest of the poor living in various areas of the Philippines. You can check them out at www.caremin.com. To give a quick synopsis, ICM runs a few programs that are aimed to help some of the 10 million+ people in the Philippines that live below the subsistence level, the level where you only have enough money to pay for food (below $0.54/per day). To put that in perspective, that is about 1/3 of the Canadian population living below the subsistence level. WOW.
Over the course of a week we witnessed and participated in a number of the ICM programs. The days were physically, emotionally and mentally draining. Add on some jet lag and a few "team building" nights out and sleep was definitely at a premium but that didn't really seem to matter. We spent a few afternoons getting dirty and sweaty building a "CR", basically an outhouse, for a few families. We each had the opportunity to teach a community a lesson in either health practices or livelihood skills and we spent many a day in slum areas with ICM staff meeting families involved in different ICM programs. The most rewarding part of the trip by far was meeting the countless children and families and listening to their inspiring stories filled with perseverance, tragedy, loss, heartbreak and hope. As you will see below, smiles were aplenty in Bacolod, "the city of smiles", which was absolutely remarkable considering the living conditions and obstacles faced by the people we met.
How did I get this opportunity you ask? Well, my employer, Lancashire, together with its charitable foundation, is one of the largest corporate donors to ICM and every year for the past four years has sent a team of 6 employees to the Philippines to experience first hand the work being performed by ICM. When applications came around to be a part of this years trip I was sure to put my name in that hat and luckily was picked as one of the six representatives - 3 from our Bermuda office and 3 from our London office. When September 6th hit we were on our way. Hope you enjoy the pictures and commentary below. Feel free to drop me an e-mail me if you have any questions - I could talk for hours either about this or any other subject that fancies you.
Getting anywhere from Bermuda is always tough. Including layovers we were embarking on a 36 hour journey up and over Santa's house.
3 tired Bermuda folk in Hong Kong airport. That's Stacy (left) and Shavon (right)
What do you do when it feels like noon but it is midnight in Manila and the London people just arrived? You "Teambuild" until 4am. (Clockwise: Louise, Pascale, Shavon, yours truly and Stuart)
Then you wake everyone up at 5:30am and head back to the airport to fly to Bacolod, a city of about 500,000 people.
We spent our first afternoon, Sunday, walking through a slum area, getting a feel for what the rest of the week would hold for us.
And we took sometime to visit the ICM offices and learned about their demo garden below. Quite impressive. Built right on the side of a busy road.
ICM uses Gardens such as these to help teach others how they can effectively use what limited space they have to grow nutritious food to consume or sell. As we soon realised (below), the Filipino diet isn't very concentrated the vegetable department so getting people to not only grow but also consume vegetables must be quite the task for the ICM staff.
Our first full morning in Bacolod was spent with one of the ICM Jumpstart Kindergarten classes. It was a great morning with songs and crafts followed by some of us serving the children lunch while the rest of us enjoyed the coconuts.
Did I mention it was a little hot in the Philippines?
After class ended with the children we spent some time in the community visiting a few families.
Then we headed to the building sites in a separate slum community. We spent the better part of four afternoons digging holes, mixing cement, laying blocks and getting to know the families we were helping. We split off with Stuart and I heading to work with one family while the girls tackled another hole for a separate family close by. The next bunch of pictures are from our four afternoons at the building sites.
Unfortunately the dirt was more of a thick, compact, heavy clay which made for a fun dig. Above is Peter, one of our trip leaders from ICM, trying to break up any piece of clay he could. Eventually we got about 5 feet or so down into the ground.
Building days were always ended with dirty beers on the hotel rooftop patio.
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We were also lucky enough to spend a few mornings in different communities with the Malnourished Children Outreach programs. ICM identifies 15 severely underweight children in each community and provides them with a meal every day for four months. The groups of mothers and children were very welcoming with songs (some of which I am now singing to Elise) and plenty of smiles. After helping feeding the children and speaking with the mothers we were able to visit many of the families at their homes.
It took me about 10 minutes but I eventually got this little guy to eat
One of the other ICM programs that we spent some time witnessing, and eventually teaching, was the Value/Health/Livelihood course that are part of the ICM Transform program. This is a program offered to some of the poorest families in each community. It involves 16 weeks of lessons that cover everything from basic hygiene to building a business. The program gave us more opportunities to meet and interact with families and the ICM staff and see the progress ICM is making in these communities.
In the ICM classroom, learning what we are going to be teaching.
Out viewing one of the courses in action.
This little guy apparently wasn't wearing any diapers. I got peed on. 7 months ago that may have made me vomit.
One of the things people learn in the VHL program is how to make a "tippy tap." Step on the stick tied to the rope, the jug tips and clean water pours out of a hole at the top of the jug. Used to wash hands - you can see a bar of soap hanging on the right.
A couple of my colleagues teaching lessons on cooking cassava desert above and a lecture on diarrhea below.
Remember that demo garden above? Well these are some put into practice by one of the attendees to the VHL course.
NIGHTS OUT
Our ICM trip leader had a number of great nights planned for us starting with a dinner with the young men, women and children at the ICM orphanage. We were treated with a night of amazing food, inspiring stories and some great dance moves.
And on another evening we participated in the ancient Filipino art of Karaoke.
And we ended the week off with an incredible performance by the ICM choir. All of these children have been through ICM programs and competed to wins pots on the choir. Seriously check out this film http://youtu.be/
We ate dinner with the choir kids and then somehow they convinced a few of us to eat "balut" also known as Duck fetus. Yep you read that right. Duck Fetus. Check it out below. First you crack the top of the egg and drink the leftover fluid. Then you peel the hard boiled egg which exposes the 16 day old fetus. Then you eat it. Apparently you can get eggs that are up to 21 days old!
And that was the end of our amazing week in Bacolod. Sorry I sort of lost some steam towards the end of writing this and apologies for not getting this up sooner. I'm an accountant, not a writer, and this took me forever to write. I'll leave you with a few more pics that I liked but didn't actually fit in above.
Hotel rooftop
Fisheye
Jeanrique (sorry about the spelling buddy) making his documentary for ICM. Oh yeah, forgot to mention we had a filmmaker follow us around for a week. It was like the Real World Philippines.
The Lancashire Team
My friend Anna tells me they are very quick at fixing things
Gang symbols
Lou on the loo
so clever
