SocialDonating.org

The following is an update on our typhoon relief in the Philippines. It´s a pretty amazing story of how a 22 year old Filipina struggled to survive the flood and rebuild her family´s life.

Please note that I left out the names of my friends who sent me this update. I have also used ¨Maggie¨ as the name of the victim to protect her privacy. If you made a donation and you want to know all the details, please send me an email and let know and I will be happy to share with you.  I just don´t want to post them on the web site.

Here´s the update…

¨Maggie’s family is from the Visayas region in the Philippines.

She moved to Pampanga a little over a year ago to work in the call center industry after college. Her family followed a few months later. About 8 months ago she moved to a Manila call center, her family following her.

She is the eldest child out of 6 — 4 girls 2 boys. Her father is an electrician that fixes things people bring him, so it’s not a steady stream of income.

Maggie is the main source of income for the family at the moment. The next kid in line is her sister who is 19 but is not in college because they can’t afford books (tuition is free).  The next is her brother who is in his last year of high school, then a 14 year old girl and the youngest is a 4 year old girl.

Maggie invited us to her neighborhood to show us around and to see how bad the floods were. The government has finally finished cleaning the garbage and most of the mud.

The whole town still has that dusty look to it.  She took us by one village that got hit the hardest where most of the deaths in Manila occurred.

When she showed us the roof where her family stayed for 2 days while waiting for rescue I was shocked… absolutely shocked. Her dad made a little boat out of empty 5 gallon water bottles to get his family, one member at a time, from their house to this rooftop, which was the closest thing above water. This roof was at the top of a 2 story building.

It was almost hard to believe that the water was that high. Then we turned down her street to get to her village, it was all downhill… literally. It was hard to wrap my brain around how deep the water must have been. Her father pointed to gigantic mango trees and said they were completely underwater for days… it was pretty crazy.

Maggie was actually at work when the floods came, so by the time she went home it was too late to get to her family. She herself had to swim to the evacuation center. She did not hear from her family for over two days — she had no idea if they were alive. (That part of the story was hard to hear from her).

How we are helping Maggie? She took out a loan to get the family back on their feet. Their old house they rented was completely ruined as it was filled with mud. So they moved to an area in the Manila area that rebounded quicker. Their new house is a small concrete room, and was also underwater and full of mud, but since it is concrete they were able to clean it easily.

It did not appear to have electricity yet, although I’m sure her Dad will get creative with resolving that issue.

So most of the $600 will go to paying back her loan. Despite seeing a naked kid running around (4yr old maybe?) she said her call center teammates all donated clothes for everybody in the family, and that they were fine on that front.

We’re buying 3 mattresses (I know, you’re thinking why 3 when there are 8 people living in the house… that’s all there is room for, it’s a tiny place).

She said she will buy rice with the money that’s left over. They have not been able to feed the entire family on a steady basis since the storm.

We talked to her and her father about his work. I figured since he works out of his home he probably lost his tools and equipment required to do his job. He did. He’s had to turn away business because he does not have the tools needed.

There are hundreds of people in the area that need their appliances fixed from the floods, but he has to turn most of the work away because he doesn’t have the basic tools any electrician would have.

We are looking to replace the tools he lost. We figured if we can get him back in business he can help get the family going again, get his daughter in college, and take some pressure off Maggie… who is only 22. So if there are still funds remaining and you agree that is a good way to spend it, we’ll take it.

It’s been a great thing that this whole group has done. You have no idea how much of an impact we are having on their lives. The looks on their faces when they hear how much we can help is priceless… it really is. Thanks again to everybody.¨

Since this update we´ve sent over more of the funds we´ve raised to help Maggie´s father purchase tools for his electrician work.

-Greg

Thank you to everyone who is helping us with our Philippines typhoon relief fund.

Little by little we’re getting up there. We’re now at $3,398 in donations… on our way to $4,000 by the end of next week.

As of today, we’ve sent $3,000 over so far:

• $1,000 – These funds went to Ortigas Center, Manila relief ops at Telus call center. Our contribution went into a pool of money being used to help out those in most need.
• $1,600 – These funds were going to go to relief ops in Makati at eTelecare but a life-threatening situation came up in Central Luzon. We sent the funds there to help fund a life-saving operation for a typhoon victim there. The man’s wife thought she had lost him in the mud slides that resulted from typhoon rain. She found him but his leg was infected and if he didn’t have an operation to remove it soon he would die. He had the operation and our funds are going to pay for the hospital bill and hopefully help get the family back on their feet. There’s a compelling personal story involved that I can’t post on this site for privacy reasons. If you made a donation, you received the email from me telling you about this.  We’ll send more funds to this family as we raise them.
• $400 - These funds went toward another individual emergency, similar to the story above, but in the Manila area. Click here to view the details.

Thank you to everyone who is helping by praying, donating, or just spreading the word online to your friends who may be interested in helping too.

-Greg

My friend Emma just got back from Manila. Here was an update she sent me from her perspective of things over there:

Emma (blonde) with Riza (all the way to the left) and James (all the way to the right)

“I first came to the Philippines exactly a year ago. This is now my third trip here. I consider myself a pretty well travelled individual, but I am always struck by the poverty surrounding me here and how lucky we are back home to live the way we do. Its funny how much we can take for granted until we see what others do not have an option to have.

Even though people may have less here, they always seem to be happy and have a smile on their face. The people of the Philippines are known for their politeness and hospitality. The workers at the hotel greet you whenever you pass by them and there are at least 15 to 20 people I walk by when I leave my hotel room. I have never met a more friendly people—they definitely go out of their way to make me feel welcomed in their country. I always look forward to these trips a couple times a year and have made some very good friends over the past year here.
 
I am writing this when I should be asleep because it is very late in Austin and I have to go to work in just a few hours. When I am in Manila, I work at nights because I work with a call center here which is open during US hours so we can service the American consumer population. I am not sure how the locals here do it; work long hours during the night and sleep only four or five hours during the day. The city isn’t quiet either during the day which makes it even harder to sleep. There are many people I work with here that have children and sleep even less so they can spend more time with their children before and after school.
 
I expected to see a lot of damage from the recent flooding but most of it has been cleaned up now in Manila. I have heard that there are heaps of trash in Marikina (Football fields full of trash)which is one of the lower lying Provence of Manila, where a lot of people belongings were dumped. The only other remnants of the severe storm are on hillsides where the earth and trees have been pulled up from mudslides. It rained so much that the earth became so saturated it couldn’t absorb any more water. The earth became unstable and created huge and catastrophic mud slides. In the more rural areas outside metropolitan Manila, many homes were completely wiped away by these mud slides.
 
I am meeting with some people at the Ortigas, Manila center tomorrow where we donated $1,000 to their relief efforts. I’ll check on things. More to come…”

Emma sent me a note the next day with this info:

“The $1,000 we donated got put in with the money that Telus had raised as well and went towards people who lost a lot in the flood (appliances, beds and household goods). Telus first put a list together and categorized people based off severity of what they had lost so that the people who lost the most got assistance first.”

I’ve heard stories of entire neighborhoods disappearing from mudslides triggered by the typhoon rain in remote areas of the Philippines.

Riza and James are two of my friends living in Pampanga, Philippines. They're overwhelmed with the amount of help needed for the typhoon/mudslide victims. Right now, they're raising money to help fund a life-saving operation for the husband of a woman at one of the call centers James and I worked with. If you'd like to help, please say a prayer for this man or make a donation toward his operation.

Just a few days ago, one of my friends and former co-workers, James Keating, told me that several people at the call center where I used to work in Pampanga (hours away from Manila) didn’t just lose some family members — they lost their entire family in the mudslides that hit a mountainous city called Baguio.

These are people he works with now, so he’s been compelled to help in any way he can. Since James lives in the Philippines now, he’s been volunteering his time and financial support to the victims — but he’s getting overwhelmed with the amount of relief needed for these people.

I didn’t realize how bad the situation was outside of Manila — and that the typhoon took a harder toll on my friends’ families from this remote call center than it did in the Manila centers where I worked. But I’m glad I know now, because we have a real opportunity to save lives… not just help rebuild them.

Right now, according to James, the most urgent need is medical attention and cleaning supplies because of the flood-born disease that is rapidly spreading.

Because of the remote location of these mudslide victims, getting relief isn’t as available as it is in a large city like Manila. My sister-in-law, Becky, has volunteered to head-up a project that will help get these medical/cleaning supplies to James. More on this later.

In the meantime, I learned that of the people that have survived the mudslides, one man has an immediate need to have his infected leg removed before he dies.

This man was washed away in the mudslides and his wife thought she had lost him… but I believe by the grace of God he was found alive — and now he has a chance to be saved.

The man’s wife works in the Pampanga-based call center that I worked with. James told me that they’re trying to raise money to fund his operation through cake sales.

He doesn’t know how much the operation is yet, but due to the urgent need for this life-saving operation, it seems like we should prioritize saving lives over rebuilding them if we can. Therefore, this man will receive $1,600 of the funds we’ve raised at SocialDonating.org.

This wouldn’t have been possible without your prayers and donations.

I just wanted to give you an update on this and let you know that your support is truly going toward a great cause. I can’t say thank you enough for your compassion for these people that you don’t even know.

If you’ve got time to say a quick prayer for this man, pass along this story, or make a $5 donation, it can help this man more than you may realize.

Thank you.

-Greg

**First Relief Update**

The first call center that I helped launch for Dell over in the Philippines was  with an outsource partner called Ambergris — located in Ortigas Center, Manila.

Only days after Typhoon Ketsana hit the Philippines, TIP team members tirelessly prepare relief goods for their affected teammates.

A year before I left Dell, Ambergris got bought out by Telus – the Toronto-based telecom. Scores of my Filipino friends from the “Ambergris days” still work at that center. One of them, who I’m working directly with to coordinate the distribution of $1,000 of our relief funds, just sent me an interesting email he received.

It looks like the information was originally intended for employees at the Canada-based Telus call center. It then got passed along to the Manila-based Telus call center… and then forwarded to me.

The purpose of the email is to provide a quick summary of the relief ops taking place in the Manila center (formerly known as Ambergris).

I wanted to share this update with you because the first $500 that we sent in relief money went to this relief operation. A second $500 will be going there as well. Hopefully more will be going as well.

With the exception of one person, I used different names to protect the privacy of the call center employees in this update.

Here’s the message:

Continue reading Over 300 Of Our Filipino Friends Were Just Left Homeless

Good news today: The United States Department of Agriculture just announced it will send nearly $9 million worth of rice and dry milk to the Philippines.

This donation should help provide food and drink to 438,000 “Ondoy” and “Pepeng” flood victims for 60 days.

The U.S. Agriculture Secretary said:

The food aid I am announcing today will help the people in the most need of assistance, and as a long-standing friend and partner of the Philippines, the U.S. stands ready to continue our cooperation and assistance in the future.

Get the full story here.