THE Philippines is considered a developing country, with its economic growth and boom in certain industries. However, these boom and bust cycles has little impact on reducing poverty in the country. In fact, the Asian Development Bank has said that, “poverty and inequality in the Philippines remains a challenge.”
There is a great divide and inequality across income brackets. With the country’s differing regions and sectors, as well as unmanaged population growth, poverty reduction in the Philippines has been slow.
The most affected are the children. Having nothing to eat, no safe shelter, no access to health care and education, these young people grow up just like how they lived—being poor. This adds on to the problem, making it near impossible to reduce the rate of poverty.
Aiming to protect and provide the basic human rights of the poorest of the poor children in the Philippines, Project PEARLS (Peace, Education, Aspiration, Respect, Love and Smiles) came to happen.
In 2008, Melissa Villa and her daughter, Francesca (who are based in San Jose, California), started a humble project to help a deaf and mute childhood friend, who was living in the Manila’s slums. They helped her send her two children to school.
Two years later, Manila-based Belgian photojournalist Sidney Snoeck posted on Facebook a photo of a child worker in Ulingan who was coated with soot and dirt from head to toe. Located in Tondo, Manila, Ulingan—the Filipino word for “charcoal factory”—is a small community in a reclaimed area of Manila’s North Harbor. The families living there worked to produce charcoal to sell and only earn a meager $2 a day. Apart from that, the living and working conditions in Ulingan is unsanitary and inhabitable.
From that photo, Villa, who is Project PEARLS’ Executive Director and Founder, knew she had to do something for those children. The two kids they sent to school then grew to at least 300 children being fed and taught every week, and to more than 300 scholars from pre-school to college.
With its mission to feed, educate, advocate and work for the basic human rights of the Filipino children living in poverty, Project PEARLS became their responsible voice. Their main goal is to help the children get out of poverty to enable them to achieve their dreams.
“We believe that education (and literacy) will break that vicious cycle of poverty,” said Villa. “We offer scholarships from preschool to college; we run after school programs, summer programs, literacy clubs both for the youth and the adults. We open educational opportunities for them to make them realize that their hopes and dreams of getting out of poverty are possible through education.”
She also shared that the first community they adopted in Tondo, Manila was recently relocated. Through Project PEARLS, the people were able to understand what were written in the proposal and agreement drafted by the government. “We helped this community by becoming their eyes, ears and voice; because most of them are illiterate,” Villa said.
Starting with only ten volunteers, Project PEARLS grew in numbers—with almost a hundred at present. They also adopted another community in Tondo, the Helping Land, but still continue to help the Ulingan families in their new location.
At present, Project PEARLS’ current programs include the Daily Soup Kitchen, Scholarship Program, Sunday After School Program, Brain Booster, Literacy Clubs, Birthday Program, and their Medical & Dental Mission.
“Future programs include expansion of our After School Program from once a week to daily and sustainable livelihood programs,” shared Villa and then added, “We also would like to bring Project PEARLS in the rural part of the Philippines.”
Although Project PEARLS have managed to get grants and donations from foundations and individuals, Villa admits that one major challenge is their funding.
“We have grown over the five years since we established in terms of the children and communities we are serving and the number of outreach programs we hold. Our funding and resources are still very limited,” she said. “Because of these limitations, not all of our scholars have sponsors; we can only feed a few hundreds of children; we cannot help all the children with urgent and emergency health cases.”
With this in mind, Villa would like to impart a message on helping others: “We are all blessed and privileged to be in the US and living that American Dream. And we can still help the least [fortunate] back home in the Philippines. These poorest of the poor children and communities do not have the same welfare benefits that the poor have here. There are children from these poorest communities who are already working so none of their family members will die of starvation overnight. We can all make a difference; we can all try to live simply so others can simply live.”
To help, volunteer, share, advocate, please check their website at www.projectpearls.org and follow them on Facebook: www.facebook.com/projectpearls1 and Instagram @projectpearls.
Project Pearls was registered with the Philippine Securities and Exchange Commission in 2011, as a non-stock, non-profit, and non-partisan organization and is a non-profit 5010 (c) (3) organization.
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Source: http://asianjournal.com/
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