The story so far... The begining at fort...

Our first tryst with Gawad Kalinga was at the sprawling grounds at Fort Bonifacio. It was their annual event where the beneficiaries and volunteers come together to flaunt their achievements during the year. We were kind of trying to check out if we could pick up on some leads to start a school project and boy !! there were leads around every corner.

The sheer number of people at the congregation and their energy was overwhelming. There were stalls all around the periphery of the ground that sold homemade cookies, pickles and other snacks. Kids holding lunch boxes from Cartoon Network were playing all over the place and there was a huge stage with blaring music interrupted often by a guy announcing events, prizes and location of stalls having attractive discounts.

It was a rally with people from different communities holding up flags and getting ready for a march around the ground. However, we steered ourselves to the corner that had posters and information desks on the kind of activities that GK was involved in. A soft spoken lady volunteer gave us a couple of brochures and began explaining about the origin of GK and the kind of activities they were involved in.

GK is a NGO that is involved in the building housing projects, education and youth development for the poor in Philippines. It's a truly global organization with operations in Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Vietnam. They have around 1600 housing community projects in Philippines benefiting thousands of poor families. Each community is called a village and the poor there are built houses that they can actually own and repay a mortgage over 30-40 years. Also there were stalls that showed activities for the children and youth. Actually there was huge bus with around 30 computers that would serve as a mobile computer school for children.

It was kind of paradoxical that the swanky stores of Market! Market! were just a couple of meters behind this ground that was teeming with people who were in abject poverty. But the kind of activism and energy that GK seemed to have whipped up amongst them was truly remarkable.