21 January, 2004 10:20 AM
Blogathon - Entry 32
Late in 2002 I travelled with a group of young adults to the Philippines to visit the International Needs workers there. The following is part of my journal entry from the first day.
'We then went to Pasey City (pictured left) - which has the honor of being the most densley populated square km on earth. Over 3 million people live in this small area.
Obviously it is terribly cramped - the conditions are incredibly basic and the need of the situation is overwhelming. The people seem to live quite happily despite their circumstances which would cause outrage in my own country. For up to 20 people to live in a tin room smaller than my bedroom at home is not unusual. People have to sleep in shifts in some cases because there is not enough room.
There are children everywhere - most don't seem to go to school but instead wander the streets during the day looking for scraps to recycle, begging or playing in the gutters.
We visited a school of 170 children being run by IN. the kids there were sponsored by people in Australia, NZ and the US - the difference in them was remarkable. They had hope. Other children looked through the gate but there is little hope for many of them to receive even a basic education.
IN run a project here to help families find a way of breaking the cycle of poverty that they are in. It is called the pedicab project. They hire/purchase the pedicabs (its like a rickshaw - pictured left - click to enlarge) to families who pay it back out of their earnings over 12 months. At the end of this time they own it outright and have an ongoing capacity to earn enough money to live on. The initial money then goes to doing the same thing with another family the next year. The cycle continues so that after 10 years 10 families have been empowered to feed, clothe educate themselves.
This is one of the best things I've seen in community development. Today I rode in one of the pedicabs and met a number of drivers. They were very excited and proud of their cabs. I'd like to go home and get people involved in helping this project. The $400 ($400AU=$270US) for the cab is so little when i think about the impact it has. For us it is just a few days work - but for these people it is the difference between feeding their children for life and not.
All proceeds from this Blogathon go towards the purchase of Pedicabs - please consider a what you might contribute.
