Tuesday noon, February 9, 2010 – We walked a kilometer to reach our destination in the hot afternoon sun. It was another adventure for me and my team we stepped into mud and it covered all our toes but it is nothing compared how my heart breaks. As we passed the demolished houses because the owner needs the space for new buildings, squatted houses has a red mark, the community that we saw squatted there from generation to generation… they don’t have a place to go to.. What they did was they just moved much further into the mangrove area. The water was totally polluted.
I saw this little kid who doesn’t have hope that he can get out of the swamp he lived in. He doesn’t even know how old is he, neither can recognize his real name. He doesn’t have a birth certificate that will be his proof that he existed in this world.
Before, upon seeing this picture in magazines and posters,within me I was saying, “Well I don’t think there are children who looks like these..hmm.. Maybe they just take a picture elsewhere.. and post it.. I have this feeling that these people doesn’t exist in this world.. No community as poor as this that they can’t even afford to buy their own meal..”
Totally I was wrong. Indeed it was here before my eyes.. a child, and not just a child, but a community who lived in a swamp area that all their lives they were there. The lifestyle that they had was so sad that they just throw their garbage everywhere. No one to teach them the proper way of garbage disposal. They would cut the mangroves to build a house and don’t even know how to plant just to replace it. No permanent job to cater to their family’s needs.. No way of getting to school because they were undocumented.. What else can the future gave to these children? All their lives they spent in miserable situation. This people needs our help to educate them and give them hope. Every kid that we educate will change not only their life, their family, but their community as well.
to be continued
Water World is a 5 months old goducate center Sabah. It was named waterworld because once it was high tide the water reaches until the floor of our elevated school house. High tide will never be a hindrance to the students to go to school as well as volunteered teachers. I’ll show you some several ways to go to school even though high tide.
The model farm in Laguna, Philippines was a month-old operation when I visited it with the directors of Goducate in August. Its purpose is to demonstrate to the poor to produce vegetables for their own consumption. The first thought that came to mind, as I listened to the Goducate farm worker who showed me around, was that this place is a living lab. I noticed that each vegetable plot and… Continue reading
This is a story of a boy in Laguna which will probably remain untold had the Goducate team not visited him at his home. One would have thought that Ian Mendoza is 12 years old simply because of his child-like appearance. But he is actually 18 years old. Ian suffers from meningioma – a non-aggressive cancer of the central nervous system. A slow-growing brain tumor – probably the size of… Continue reading
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