simonong.net|v5

What’s in a life of poor Filipino people?

If you are going to travel in the City, you can see them everywhere. Squatters on empty lands, along the Pasig River, under the bridge, along railroads, some have no shelter and just lay on the ground when it’s night time.

You can see them begging for food, children selling sampaguita on the road just to earn money, some children will get inside a PUJ and starts to wipe your shoes just for the sake of giving them money for that service.

Some go beyond the sane mind and start to rob other people; women often sell their body through prostitution. Or worse, they end up taking their lives.

All of these are being blamed to poverty, but what really is poverty?

Poverty is deprivation of common necessities that determine the quality of life, including food, clothing, shelter and safe drinking water, and may also include the deprivation of opportunities to learn, to obtain better employment to escape poverty, and/or to enjoy the respect of fellow citizens.¹

I’ve seen poverty first hand when I was still studying in college. Back then I became a volunteer for Gawad Kalinga, a non-government organization envisioned the Philippines to be slum-free by providing housing, education to the poor. I’ve seen it first hand when I visited an upcoming GK Village, I saw the condition they have, living on a dry land with no electricity, no clean water and no food to eat. You can see the children playing with torn clothes or even nothing at all. You can feel what they were going through by just merely looking at them.

That’s when I realize that poverty is not something the media exaggerates on the news, it’s real and it’s happening in front of me and all I can do is look at them. And from that moment on, I think God for an organization like Gawad Kalinga who strives and helps them overcome poverty by helping them feel that they can overcome it by providing the basic needs of a family. I have talked to many volunteers from GK, some are also like me, from colleges, and some came from the village GK built up from scratch, who were drug addicts, gamblers but when GK helped them , they changed drastically, and made them realize that they have a better life if they do something about it.

Being poor is not the end of the world, you just have to believe in yourself and do something about it. As for the Government, I believe that they can help, if corrupt government officials were stripped off their duties. As for us, we can help by joining NGO’s like Gawad Kalinga. As of the Internet world, I hope that with my small voice on Blog Action Day, I hope that this little post of mine can contribute to the vision of the event.

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¹Poverty - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia