Paco’s ‘river warriors’ need help for better cleanup boats

The “River Warriors” of Estero de Paco are looking for a few good netizens.

ABS-CBN Foundation’s Kapit Bisig Para sa Ilog Pasig is turning to online “crowdfunding” as a way to finance its cleanup of Manila’s polluted waterways in the congested Paco district.

The foundation announced its partnership with The Spark Project, a startup crowdfunding community to help finance the activities of the River Warriors, a group of civilian volunteers leading cleanup efforts in the community.

The group hopes to raise P90,000 to purchase two fiber glass boats to be used in the cleanup of the clogged creek, the foundation said in a statement.

The volunteers currently rely on makeshift rafts, which can be quite difficult to use in negotiating the estero for the daily cleanup.

“The boats we have been using are already in disrepair, which is why we now only use rafts,” said Ruby Cientos, vice president of the River Warriors in Paco. A colleague, Antonio Peñalosa, recalled losing his balance on the unwieldy craft and falling into the dirty water.

Individual donors can donate online or through bank deposits, with the details available on thesparkproject.com/

project/river-warrior-boats/.

The crowdfunding project runs until Sept. 26.

Crowdfunding is a relatively new online practice in which people can pool their resources together over the Internet to support various projects and causes.

According to its website, The Spark Project is described as “a community that aims to showcase Filipino talent and ingenuity through an online crowdfunding platform where they can campaign to fund their creative, innovative, and passion-driven projects.” DJ Yap