By Patricia Esteves, The Philippine Star, March 2, 2008

In a Gawad Kalinga village in Burog, Bamban town, Tarlac, neatly dressed Aeta children gather inside a Sibol classroom, GK’s pre-school facility, listening intently as their teacher reads books and counts numbers.

Their parents, meanwhile, are out in the field, harvesting fruits and vegetables or tending to livestock.

A few years back, Aeta children and their mothers picked through trash for bottles, metal scraps and newspapers that earned them around P50 a day, while others simply roamed around the city begging for food.

For a time, Aetas in Tarlac have been used to living in poverty, with misery and ugliness all around them, and people paying little or no attention to them.

But today, things are different. The 100 Aeta families in this town now live in brightly colored, clean and sturdy homes and are beneficiaries of free schooling and sustainable livelihood.

Apart from this, Singles for Christ (SFC) and Couple’s for Christ (CFC) members continue to care for the Aetas through various “Kapatiran” and fellowship activities meant to “reinforce GK’s thrust on building not just homes but more importantly, relationships.” CFC members conduct values formation programs among the Aetas.

Last February 12-14, SFC members from Zamboanga Sibugay, Metro Manila, Tarlac, Canada, Australia, United States and the Middle East spent three days in GK Burog to bond and interact with the Aetas.

After having built more than 150 houses for the Aetas, GK said that by bringing volunteers to the Aeta sites, they are able to show that GK genuinely cares for them.

SFC members like Delson Villanueva, an engineer from Qatar who participated in the event dubbed “Kapatid, sa GK walang Iwanan,” said they did not only teach the Aetas but also learned their culture, history and way of life.

“The event wanted to highlight the beauty and the treasure within the Aetas. It also aims to awaken participants on some social issues affecting the Aetas,” GK champion Tony Meloto said.

‘Survivor series’

The SFC participants did not just construct houses but activities, patterned after the “Survivor Series”, were integrated in the building process. A total of 33 participants were divided into three tribes such as Manwelek, Oyha, and Abukay, Ayta Mag-antsi for a large forest rat, deer and civet cat, respectively. Some of the workshops/challenges were the “Hunt”, where participants were taught how to use the bow & arrow used by the Aetas for hunting; and archery.The participants were given an overview of the history and culture of the Aetas and were oriented on the Mag-Antsi language of the Aetas.

The indigenous people harvest and sell papaya, the main source of income in GK Burog, for only P10 pesos per kilo (farm-gate price).

‘Love the other’

Filipino-American Justin Claravall said he felt a profound calling to “love the other” when he spent time with Aetas in Burog.

“When I first got off the minicab and saw the children playing, shouting, rolling on the dirty ground, a thought invaded my head: ‘These kids are dirty.’ How embarrassing it was for me to judge these kids so immediately,” Justin said, recalling his first visit to a GK site.

He said he reflected on his guilt and asked for God’s forgiveness and this drove him to be close to the children.

“After a couple days, the Aeta children returned love in spades. Little girls followed me around, hugging me and telling me they’ll cry when I leave,” Justin said.

“From the initial prejudice up to the time we left, I felt more accepted and I cared more for the well-being of the villagers, especially the children, who lavished me with so much affection,” he added.

In totality, he said the whole experience brought him closer to God by showing him that to love Him, he must learn to love his neighbors.

Justine was raised in California and is a member of the GK Builders Corp for six months.

Delson, who also spent time in GK Burog, was introduced to GK by SFC-Qatar. As an overseas Filipino worker (OFW), he realized that GK was the perfect vehicle for him to express his love to his poor kababayans, particularly street children.

“Everytime I do GK work, I’m very inspired because I know that it is full of love – love for people, love for country and love for God,” Delson said.

“It’s a different experience for me. We were very happy to be welcomed by the Aetas.

You can see that they were very willing to learn and improve their lifestyle. They do not want to beg but they would rather crave for attention, understanding and love,” Delson said.

“My commitment to GK is to continue to support their program and as an OFW, I will continue promoting GK in our area in the Middle East particularly in Qatar. By God’s will, I want to be a full time GK worker someday. We in SFC-Qatar have a GK pledge and that is going to GK San Martin every year, that’s the place we want to build a village,” Delson said.

The Aetas’ homes, free school education and livelihood programs are part of GK’s Indigenous People (IP) program, which aims to help indigenous communities build ecologically sound and sustainable villages, sharing a common vision that is economically progressive, promoting social equity and providing a good quality of life.

“So we are bringing in the programs for health, education, food production together with improvement of shelter that respects the history, tradition of indigenous peoples,” said Meloto in an interview.

Their goal is to preserve the beautiful culture and unique qualities not only of Aetas in Pampanga, Zambales and Tarlac but also of the Mangyans in Mindoro, the Dumagats in Aurora and Rizal, the Palawonons of Palawans, the Bilaans, Tibolis, Mamawons, Subanens and other indigenous peoples in Mindanao.

by Willy E. Arcilla

Come, take up your flag and follow me. In answer to the clarion call of the country’s Church officials for “communal action” and the public clamor for a new brand of people power amidst the unfolding ZTE bribery and corruption scandal, the social-realist painter Joey Velasco, whose famous work “Hapag ng Pag-Asa” moved millions in the country and around the world, has responded with his newest creation entitled, “Take Up Your Flag”. The oil-on-canvass painting depicts Jesus Christ, who is no longer dead on the cross nor meek as a lamb as usually projected, but grim-faced and defiant. Jesus has taken up the role as the country’s paramount leader, to symbolize the need for a reunification — not a separation — of religious beliefs and temporal affairs. It is a message to all our leaders in government, the church and civil society to live a “unity-of-life” in communion with Jesus Christ and in consonance with his teachings — as real-life disciples, and not merely nominal Sunday churchgoers.

Jesus Christ is boldly depicted raising a tattered Philippine flag, a poignant symbolism of the countless upheavals the country has been through ” from the Cry of Pugad Lawin in 1896 to the volley of musketry in Bagumbayan in 1898; from the Fall of Bataan to the infamous Death March in 1942, from the anguish of 1983 to the euphoria of 1986, and then again in 2001. But now, after all the time consumed and the energy spent, we find ourselves once again caught in a turbulent maelstrom. Many already show signs of frustration and weariness, hopelessness and despair as a tattered nation. So Velasco has decided the only real way to move forward is if we anoint Jesus our paramount leader.

Velasco shares his thoughts and feelings, “The face of Jesus beckons; the eyes challenge us; the tough stance tells us there is no way to lose. We will definitely win this war. And the battle cry is love. He is offering his life in the frontlines of the battlefield. His Eucharistic action of life giving is extended to social action. Hence, it is a call to action”.

What makes Velasco’s painting even more gripping is Jesus has not only picked up the tattered flag — which in fact resembles many flags around the country — faded and torn — but He has inverted the flag showing the red band atop the blue, declaring that the nation is in a state of war. Jesus seems to rally His people for the final conflict in the saga of the Filipino nation. Jesus is urging all Filipinos to join an uprising He will personally lead — not only against graft and corruption — but against all forms of human wrongdoing — yet not through violent means, but by pursuing the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity, reinforced by the human virtues of courage and confidence, infused with the supernatural virtues of faith, hope and charity, powered by prayer and brought to life in action and leadership by example. Jesus issues a “call to arms” in the war of the good over the evil. Indeed, amidst all the seemingly intractable challenges and crises that continue to bedevil the country, we must all agree that our nation is not at peacetime. Our nation is at war.

We continue to fight the massive and protracted war against graft and corruption; against the vicious cycle of poverty and destitution; hunger and malnutrition; landlessness and homelessness; poor health and high mortality; the war against illiteracy and inferior education; the war against unemployment and underemployment; labor exploitation and low productivity; the war against the lack of opportunities causing the Filipino diaspora; against selfish gratification and ostentatious hedonism; the war against a widening rich-poor gap and undue concentration of wealth; the war against alcoholism and illegal gambling; drug abuse and prostitution; and all forms of crime and violence; the war against pride and hubris; greed and avarice; the war against colonial mentality and crab mentality; the war against nominal Christianity and religious intolerance vs. our Muslim brothers; the war against all physical and armed conflict — extrajudicial killings and communist insurgency, terrorist attacks and secession; abuses by the armed forces and abuses against the armed forces; the war against marital infidelity and broken families; against indecency and immorality; lust and licentiousness; the war against apathy and indifference; negativism and pessimism; the war against treachery and hypocrisy; the war against “Bahala Na” fatalism, “Pwede na” mediocrity and “Pasensiya Na” excuses; the war against excessive politics and an obsession over intrigues; the war against bureaucratic red tape in government and a culture of privilege among oligarchs, the war against a lack of competitiveness and inertia to change in the face of an increasingly competitive global market; and the war against environmental degradation and climate change — indeed, this is an all-out war we need to wage against all forms of evil in the country and across multiple fronts — not only in government but in civil society, at work and at home, not only against the evil in others but more so, the evil within ourselves.

Velasco muses, “These were the same issues before the Shepherd was slaughtered; before He died a poor man’s death. Before the cross became a religious icon, it was, in His time, a punishment for slaves and rebels. ‘Take up your cross,’ spoken before Jesus died on the cross and before it took on a religious meaning, in the ears of Jesus’ listeners, meant ‘commit yourself to those principles and actions which will bring you to the cross.’ For Jesus, taking up the cross meant committing Himself to liberating His people, especially the poor over the authorities, tradition and laws, and the corrupt state of His time”.

Even after 110 years of independence, our country remains in disunity, not only from a culture of regionalism imbibed over more than 400 years of western colonization, but what is more insidious is the deep division between the forces of good against evil. Yet history also shows how Filipinos have galvanized themselves as one nation in times of adversity to put up a valiant fight against common enemies, such as the revolt of the first 8 provinces against Spain, and the whole country against the Japanese occupation; our victory against the tyranny of a despot in 1986 and the immorality of a drunkard in 2001. This must be the inspiration for Jesus Christ to call upon all Filipinos to fight the final battle against all enemies of the common good so we may enjoy true and lasting freedom.

“Thus for the followers of Jesus, ‘take up your cross,’ means to stretch out one’s arm and to ‘take up the flag,’ and to commit oneself in word and deed to protest the cheating and lying, to put a stop to the extrajudicial killings of activists, journalists, and members of pro-poor movements, to bring justice to the victims and their families”, adds Velasco.

To dramatize this declaration of war and remind ourselves of the need to remain vigilant at all times, Joey Velasco seems to recapture a dramatic moment in our nation’s history when Andres Bonifacio, founder of the “Kataas-taasang, Kagalang-kagalang Katipunan ng mga Anak ng Bayan” led the Filipino revolutionaries to tear up the Spanish cedula in the Cry of Balintawak. Our nation may not be at war in the traditional definition of armed conflict, but it can be argued that we are engaged in a war no less daunting or real because the outcome of this war will dictate whether we can win the true freedom we cherish from all human oppression on earth — material and spiritual. Velasco is hopeful his latest painting can motivate each province, city, town, municipality and barangay; each diocese and each parish; each factory and each office; each school and each family to follow Jesus Christ and invert the Philippine flag to display and keep the red band on top until such time that we achieve our common mission of defeating all forces of evil and oppression. Then and only then can we achieve real victory for prosperity and peace. Then and only then can we deserve to fly the Philippine flag with the blue atop the red.

There is no doubt in Velasco’s heart this is a war we can win because it is our destiny — but only if we fight this war together as one people — in the name of God and Country — to transform what has been a “nation run like hell by Filipinos” to a “nation run like heaven by Filipinos”. We will win this war because we will follow our one true and only leader, Jesus Christ, so that filled by God the Holy Spirit, we may all renew the face of our nation, and ultimately fulfill our God-given mission; help renew the face of the earth.

Velasco says, “Jesus calls to each and every Filipino today, “Come, take up your flag, and follow me usque ad staturam Christi.” (until we reach the stature of Christ).”

Kate McDonell, GK Volunteer..

How do explain what it is like to spend three weeks in the Philippines working with Engineers Without Borders? I certainly can’t explain it in a couple of paragraphs but it is definitely an overwhelming and life changing experience.

The first twenty two years of my life I have lived as an only child. I used to joke that I had adopted siblings (my close friends) because I didn’t have any real siblings. But then I went to the Philippines and lived with a family, now my family. I now have three younger sisters (Lerma, Lan Lan, Carla) and a younger brother (Christian) in addition to a massive extended family. More often than not during the day my cousin dropped her baby, Jacinta, off with my mum (Leni) when she went to work. I met my Dad once, who worked for Manila Water as a driver, but he was at work all the time. So this was now my family and we lived in a house that volunteers had built the year before and was of the same design as the houses I was building.

Eight of us lived in this house, 14m2, made of hollow concrete blocks with concrete, of unknown mix quantities, filling the holes, rebar for the columns and a tin roof. We lived simply and happily but without much privacy. In the first couple of days, used to being an only child, the lack of privacy and lack of acknowledgement of one’s personal possessions frustrated me. I couldn’t go to the toilet without being asked where I was going. I would check my bag to look for my sunglasses and find that not only were my sunglasses not in my bag, neither were my hat or my camera. My things weren’t stolen. My siblings had them. From their perspective they weren’t ‘my’ things; they were ‘our’ things and so could be taken and returned as they chose. The rule applied to all of their possessions also, of which there were not many.

It was somewhere between learning all the words to ‘I will survive’ by osmosis, being comfortable with singing karaoke sober and learning to enjoy cold dipper showers that I knew my life had changed for ever.

I learnt so many life lessons from being there, particularly from my family. I think the most important one was about my responsibility to do something about poverty. You can watch the television and see people in poverty but then you can turn it off and it somehow goes away. But I can’t do that anymore because my family lives in poverty. My little sister, Lerma, can’t go to college because our family can’t afford to send her. This is not someone else’s responsibility. It is my responsibility now. They are my family and I have to do something.

Being part of their community, learning about their stories, just being there to listen meant so much to them. I think it was equally hard for the community to understand why we, as westerners, would bother to come. They didn’t think that we owed them anything. I tried to explain my reason for going. I was born in a lucky country. Everyone deserves a chance no matter where you are born. It took them a long time to understand and in the end our families changed too.

Our families changed because we were there not for ourselves but for them. They needed to know that somewhere far off people they didn’t know who didn’t “owe” them anything were thinking of them. That they hadn’t been forgotten by the world. That people didn’t turn of the TV and pretend that their struggle went away. They needed to know that they were valued and loved. Even now it is hard for me to grasp how we, who where there for such a short time, helped fulfill this need.

My family told me about how they felt about living in the slums. They said they felt hopeless and that the world had forgotten them. The fact that we, as westerners traveled all the way around the world to be with them, and continue to think about them was a powerful source of hope and human dignity. Merely by being there was a more important gift to the community than we could ever give through building houses.

As one volunteer said “you cannot buy the happiness of the families that live in these houses. If you want to help others, you also need to sacrifice. Our sacrifice was monetary and timely, but our gain was much greater than anything we sacrificed.”

As engineers, I believe we should not always think of the fastest, cheapest, most economical way to do things, but to think of the interest of PEOPLE first, because ultimately, we should be servants of people and communities; not money and time.

Still, to this day, it really makes me rethink all my priorities when I remember how my family, who has always lived in poverty, is happier now that they have ever been.