For urbanites in First World countries, it is perhaps correct to say that most will find it difficult to empathize with those who experience real poverty. Not that I can empathize any better or had become wiser after my short visit to a rural community in Laguna, Philippines, I think poverty is not just simply earning less than US$ 1 a day, or not having enough to eat as conventional wisdom would have us to believe. To me, poverty entraps families and the future generations of those who were caught by it.
This is a snapshot of a family caught in poverty. Typically, the parents have never been schooled. I was told that it is common for poor couples to have about 5 children (and I heard there was even a couple who had 16 children!). For the children who come from poor households, life can be tough. Because their parents do not have the means, they do not attend school. For them, living from hand-to-mouth becomes real day-to-day. Daily choices in life are dictated by survivability. By the age of seven, most children would have to work to contribute to their household. And for them, work could mean that they would have to go into the forest to look for fruits such as coconuts and bananas, which would be collected as food, or sold to a middleman. Remember, these children do not have the chance to find gainful employment in the city because they are uneducated and unskilled. Most of them will marry as early as fourteen years old, possibly to ease the pressure on their parents to provide for their needs. For these newly-weds, they would have to live from hand-to-mouth and here, the cycle starts again when they have children – that is 5 children on average.
Children at Laguna
A child who collected fruits in the forest
So, this is how poverty looks like from a cyclical perspective. When it afflicts a community, it does look like a vicious cycle with no end in sight.
A nursing school that came to know about Goducate’s community work has chosen the Goducate Learning Center in Mabakan, Calaun, to be a center for practical training for their students. Hence 10 nursing students spent January training the locals in basic health awareness and doing health screenings.
Training session
Some 30 people, mostly mothers, attended… Continue reading
A fortnight ago parents of the children attending the Goducate Learning Center in Lalao, Laguna, were brought together to attend a session with their children. The session, called Mama and Me, was intended to emphasize to the parents the importance of good communication with their children and of teaching their children and supervising them while they do their homework and assignments. For the children, the intention was to impress on… Continue reading
Several of our Lifepegs volunteers have been spending part of their winter break in Singapore. Most of them are teachers of English at universities in northeast China. One of their evenings here was spent at the Goducate office. It was a time for them and the Goducate headquarters team to get to know each other, for them to tell us about their experiences in China, and for them to learn… Continue reading
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