A movement started eight years ago in the Philippines to help the desperately poor throughout the island country is gaining momentum in Southern California, as more than a thousand supporters turned out Oct. 30 to support the work of Answering The Cry Of The Poor-Gawad Kalinga (ANCOP-GK).
The benefit event, held at the Westin Hotel in Long Beach, helped launch the organization's GK777 campaign, which strives to build 700,000 homes for the poor in 7,000 Gawad Kalinga communities in seven years in the Philippines.
"Gawad Kalinga is an expression of the desire in every Filipino all over the world to restore the dignity of our people by liberating many of our countrymen from poverty through our collective effort," said GK founder Tony Meloto in a message to event attendees.
Meloto was a member of the Catholic organization Couples For Christ in the Philippines when he began seeking ways to help Filipinos he saw mired in a "suffocating" poverty. He founded GK as a way to not only provide badly needed housing but also as a mechanism for the needy to pull themselves out of poverty through work, education, and community.
"The organization is not based on charity. It's built on trying to build values in the poor," said GK spokesman Dylan Wilk. "Poverty is not just an absence of money but an absence of community and values. You just can't take away the slums; you also have to take away the slum mentality of the people who live there. It's very important to give people back dignity and hope."
Wilk, a wealthy British businessman, was so impressed by the work of GK that he gave up his multi-million dollar business to devote all of his time to building and supporting the organization. He is currently traveling throughout the United States raising awareness for the GK777 initiative.
His testimony of faith has been a powerful draw, noted GK volunteer Kevin Jane, a parishioner at St. Joseph Church in Long Beach. "I was moved by Dylan's presentation," said Jane. "Here's a foreigner telling me how to help my own people."
On Saturday, Wilk told of how amazed he was when a Filipino friend told him how little it cost to build a single house in the Philippines --- the same as it would cost to buy an expensive handbag in London.
After a visit to see the villages for himself, Wilk returned to England and sold his new $80,000 car and used the proceeds to build the GK-BMW M3 village which houses 600 people in Bulacan province.
Gawad Kalinga, which means "to give care," is based on a five-point development plan that includes shelter and site development, education, health, livelihood and community empowerment.
Rather than just build shelter, the program establishes entire communities that are built through the active participation and labor of the residents. Once the basic infrastructure of the community is completed, GK volunteers staff schools for neighborhood kids ages 7-13 and provide scholarships for those gifted enough to pursue higher education.
Within the community, health care programs are developed to monitor families health care needs. A particular problem among the poor in the Philippines is malnutrition; the health arm of GK provides feeding programs and parent education programs on proper nutrition and hygiene.
The livelihood arm of GK supports the organization's mission of creating a self-sufficient community. GK conducts skills training, provides start-up capital for micro-enterprises and assists in the marketing of the communities' products. In more rural areas, food self-sufficiency is encouraged by teaching agricultural skills.
While GK volunteers stay in the community for two to five years after the initial setup, the community is organized into a neighborhood association governed by its residents. Community members decide upon an agreed set of values by which to govern.
"When you go into a slum you'll see that people are always suspicious. They're fighting, they're drinking in the streets, and they have no hope for the future. There's no community spirit," noted Wilk. "You have to rebuild the relationships first and you can only do that through love."
Since its inception, GK has built 327 communities throughout the Philippines and with GK777 plans to build an additional 7,000 communities throughout the country and "take the Philippines from the third world to the first world," said Wilk.
The organization has been such a success in eradicating the crushing poverty in these communities that the United Nations is studying the GK model to integrate into their poverty elimination programs.
And GK itself is taking the program to other regions that are stricken by dire poverty. Currently GK is building communities in Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, India, Cambodia and South Africa.
"Through GK it's become clear to me what Jesus meant when he said his mission was to bring glad tidings to the poor," explained Wilk. "Sometimes we think this just meant the spiritually poor but it also means the materially poor because when you do that you transform the poor but you yourself also become transformed. It becomes easier to be generous and to give of yourself and it really helps you to love." For more information on Gawad Kalinga, contact Rose Cabrera at (310) 325-7039.
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