This 22 year old Filipina had to SWIM to the evacuation center

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 is 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