Up with People Cast B 2010 On Tour

For the past couple of days our group of 19 volunteers has been working at Gawad Kalinga (GK) Teguig. This site is located in the surroundings of a stinky river (covered with garbage) and slum houses. But the GK project fights against this by building houses in hopeful colors and paid with the sweat of the future inhabitants. Each family can only live in one of the houses if they have contributed to the construction and can only stay if they remain to be active in the GK community. Our site has seven parts and some are at the end of their development, some are just about to start, some contain school or other community facilities.

The first day they explained us the whole concet by taking a look at the different parts of our Gawad Kalinga project and community members shared their experiences. Besides that, we were treated with a delicious home-cooked Filipino dish.  At first I was hesitant because it looked strange but trying it helps. Another amazing experience was being dropped in a local family, every single one of us was placed in a different family to meet them for 30 minutes. To me this sounded so pushy.  The first moments were indeed kind of awkward, but slowly we started a conversation and eventually I had the best 30 minutes of the whole day. In this half hour we tried to teach each other some words in our language, the kids and I played a bit (I even received a bracelet from the smallest of the 4 children) and just talked about very basic things to get to know one another.

The next days we started with our “real” volunteer work. However I have to mention that one of the GK members made an interesting comment: It is not just construction labor or teaching practical skills to the community moms that should be seen as valuable volunteer work.  It is the interaction and interest of foreign volunteers that gives them the hope that people actually believe in their project. Our group was split into 7 small groups.  Four groups work on construction sites and did work ranging from painting to sifting to building walls.  My site was finishing up for the opening ceremony, which occurred on Monday. The whole community came together to celebrate the entry of the families into the houses, a beautiful moment where our group was part of.  Other groups played with the local children or taught them English and just helped out with their classes.  And the last group was responsible for livelihood workshops, where they teach the local moms practical skills or just have fun.  During the past days we taught them Up with People songs, Japanese writing, everyone danced together, and they taught us their language.  For the next couple of days we hope to do some geography, making bracelets they can sell, teaching some more English, etc. So you see, a high variety volunteer project where our whole group can put in its passion for these two weeks.

 By Joris van Doorslaer (Belgium)