My Experience Volunteering for GK Philippines
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- by Joel, on Thu Oct 22, 2009 11:50pm PDT
I was not willing to volunteer. But it was either volunteering for
GK Philippines
or do ROTC. I did not want to do ROTC. First of all, I was against
violence of all sorts. I understood that the military is there for
a very good reason, but I just can’t stand the idea of being part
of it in even just a small way. Plus, I would have had to stay
under the sun and march every Saturday. Nobody wants that. Well, at
least I don’t want that. So the other choice was to do community
service. So I took that and people told me that Gawad Kalinga was
the way to go because it was only a one shot big shot deal. We only
had a couple of preparatory orientation meetings then we would go
to an actual GK site and help build that community. For those who
do not know what Gawad Kalinga is, it is a charitable organization
that aims to rid homelessness in the country by building clean,
safe, and self sustaining housing communities for the poor. So that
was what we were supposed to do, build houses. Little did I know
that we were going to do a lot more than that.
The place was dirt poor. Just one look at it and you can tell.
Heck, you don’t even need to use your eyes. Just take a sniff and
it all screams poverty. There was garbage all around and the
shanties made of mismatched wood pieces and whatever material they
could salvage. The roofs of corrugated metal sheets (called yero in
the Philippines) were weighed down by small boulders and old tires
so that the wind won’t blow them off so easily. I can just imagine
when a storm hits the place, there must be so many houses that will
not stand up to strong winds. The shanties where tightly packed
together. There were also dirty rat infested canals at the side of
the whole hellish affair.
That was the old community. We passed that and got to the GK
building site. There were already some houses that were finished.
After seeing those shanties for the first time in my life, I was
really shocked. I could just imagine how life must be like for
these people. It was really saddening. That’s why I was motivated
to work harder as a full time volunteer at GK Philippines.
