Noorain Sabdulla, 21, wore a hijab—a traditional headdress for Muslim women—while helping build a house in Barangay Tugas, Madridejos town in the northern Cebu island of Bantayan.
She didn’t mind the scorching heat as she climbed the scaffoldings and poured cement into the hollow blocks.
Building a house has been one of the nursing graduate’s habits since she became a Gawad Kalinga (GK) volunteer in 2006.
“It creates awareness among people to see that there is a Muslim who is helping build a house. The important message here is that everybody is working together to help our fellow Filipinos,” says Noorain, program officer of the GK-Ateneo.
Bayani Challenge
Noorain joined nearly 2,000 volunteers from 27 Philippine provinces and three countries—Australia, Singapore and the United States—in April during the sixth GK Bayani Challenge, an annual event that started in 2006.
The first houses were put up on April 4-8 for 30 families chosen with the assistance of the local government unit and the Department of Social Welfare and Development, says GK executive director Jose Luis Oquiñena.
“Bantayan’s configuration is ideal for a new approach of bringing the GK way from the GK sites to the municipalities,” Oquiñena said.
Twenty houses were built in Madridejos and 10 in Bantayan towns.
Employee volunteers
Jeffrey Tarayao, Globe Telecom’s head for corporate social responsibility (CSR), said 23 employees from Globe and shareholder Singapore Telecommunications Limited volunteered to build the houses.
“Apart from helping people, this is an innovative way of conducting our team buildings. We call this ‘volunteaming.’ The success of our participation in GK is primarily brought about by our employees’ involvement and volunteerism,” Tarayao said.
Globe’s participation in GK has been intensified year after year. Last year, P15 million of its P40-million CSR allocation was handed to GK and GK-related projects.
Eleven Globe volunteers participated in the GK Bayani Challenge this year while SingTel sent 12, including Billy Tan, lead consultant of SingTel’s subsidiary, NCS Pte. Ltd.
This is Tan’s first experience in volunteer work outside of Singapore. His complexion was two tones darker after five days of building, but like Noorain, he didn’t mind.
Eye-opener for Singaporean
“This is quite an eye-opener for us because we don’t see this kind of situation (people living in shanties) in Singapore. I am proud to be part of this,” he said.
Civil engineer Dante Rosello said he understood the people’s needs, having experienced life in a slum area himself.
For Rommel Alido, helping build a house for GK beneficiaries like himself was a way of paying it forward. Alido’s family now lives in GK Bagong Silang Village in Caloocan City.
“My most memorable participation was in 2007 in Bicol. I saw people left homeless because of Typhoon ‘Reming’ and I saw how they suffer. But I also felt how thankful they are for our help,” he said.
GK provincial head Jerome Awit said Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia promised to give P3 million for Bantayan, while Rep. Benhur Salimbangon of the fourth district pledged P6 million for Bantayan and Madridejos.
If this materializes, 90 more houses will be built out of the total P9 million. Each house costs P100,000.