Cheryl GladstoneJournal #1
Ray Liu, my fellow CBS student and roommate, and I made it to our first day of work at 8:30 am at the Gawad Kalinga (GK) offices based out of Ateneo de Manila, one of the country’s top universities. We met with Jerrick and Leigh, two students-turned-GK employees who were charged with providing our orientation. We watched 3 different videos, and asked questions as they provided an overview of the organization and the “GK way.” People started flooding into the office, and I was impressed that by 8:45 am, 10+ people were at the office, ready to go and fired up.
Ray and I each broke off and discussed our individual projects with our supervisors. I met with Doc Eric, Mayor Baby, and Tita Zia (many people in the Philippines go by their nicknames, which aren’t diminutive as they may sound in the U.S.) who provided and overview of my project. I will be working primarily with Doc Eric, which as his name implies, is a doctor who now volunteers heavily for GK. I really appreciated that we sat down and made very specific deliverables and a timeline for my work. You can tell this is an organization that is accustomed to handling a large number of volunteers. We are the organization’s first-ever “interns” and we are looking forward to building a lasting relationship between Columbia University and Gawad Kalinga.
On my second day of work, I met up with Leigh, who transported me via taxi to Fairview, where we met Doc Eric at the local McDonald’s. We then departed via Jeepney to Barangay Bagong Silang, the barangay (“town”) where I will be working. The Jeepney ride was about an hour out of Fairview, taking us to one of the furthest towns in Manila. Bagong Silang is the largest barangay in Manila, with roughly 1 million residents, and the largest in area. First we went to the barangay office, where the administrative duties of the barangay take place. GK has a small office space in the administrative complex, further demonstrating their prowess in building relationships of trust with the government and community partners. GK never runs its own programs. For example, GK won’t open its own school. They instead partner with an organization and try to instill a “GK way” of doing things. They are an organization that is truly about building partnerships and coalitions in the Philippines.
At the barangay offices, we ran into the son of the barangay captain, who invited us to the barangay captain’s house for a late breakfast. At the captain’s house, Doc Eric and Leigh talked shop with the barangay captain in Tagalog. I was able to follow a lot of it, but had difficulty participating in the conversation.
We then returned to the GK village of Bagong Silang and met the “Mabuhay Ladies” of the barangay, 5 female residents who received training from the Department of Tourism to provide tours of their barangay to visitors. They also manage a small shop where they sell necklaces, hats, tsinelas (slippers), and other wares to make a small profit. The ladies wore matching pink t-shirts to identify them as Mabuhay Ladies, and took me on a tour of the barangay, pointing out the 250+ houses that have been constructed by GK. The transformation is truly impressive. The GK homes are colorful, lushly-landscaped, and radiate a true sense of pride compared to the “typical” barangay home, which is often made of found materials and shoddily constructed. Homes are funded by sponsors, and this Barangay has six: Philippine Tattler (newspaper), Globe Telecom, KLM, PMAP, Pharmaton, and the Filipino communities of Riverside and San Bernardino, CA, which built the first ever GK village. The village has a capacity for 450 GK houses, and right now has 250 completed.
Journal #2
Mayor Baby, Doc Eric, and Ma’am Noi are the names of my three supervisors. While the casual nature of their names suggests that the work and professionalism of Gawad Kalinga (GK) is equally casual, it is, in fact, the opposite. I have been nothing but impressed with the organization, coordination, passion, intelligence and professionalism of my colleagues here at GK.
GK is a highly organized machine that everyone in the Philippines knows about. They attract talented, intelligent people who are passionate about their work.
My responsibilities with GK include: 1) Creating a framework for how a good governance certificate course might be implemented in Barangay Bagong Silang. This involves interviewing elected officials and leaders, assessing the needs, and proposing a framework and recommendations for what a capacity training program might look like. 2) Preparing research on how GK Villages improve property values in the neighboring communities.
On a recent excursion outside of my normal project duties, I was asked to attend a Harvest Day festival in Gerona, Tarlac, 3 hours north of Quezon City. Ka-Man, my partner, came along for the ride. We met the transport van at 5:45 AM at a Jollibee’s along EDSA. The drive was amazing, with what Ka-Man calls the “magic hour” light. It was nice to get out of the heat and congestion of Manila and see the lush landscape of rice terraces and farming along the road. We arrived in Gerona just before 9 AM.
The Harvest Day festival is an initiative of the Bayani Anihan movement, which is the anti-hunger initiative of GK. They focus on building farm plots, assigning them to families and then training the families how to farm with the goal of eliminating hunger. GK partners with the School of Agricultural Sciences of Manila to provide training. It is pretty amazing, as they’ve already built 2500 farms across the Philippines.
The event itself turned out to be mostly a PR/community building event, where sponsors (bank of Philippines, Selecta) had a chance to see the fruits of their sponsorship and make speeches. There were games for the children, music, and lunch was provided to the entire village, communal style. We were there until about 2 p.m., then headed home. Overall, it gave me an opportunity to see GK in rural settings, as all my work has been based out of the very large, very urban Barangay Bagong Silang.
Journal #3
My experience here in Manila has been a lesson in the challenges and opportunities of working abroad.
I worked on two projects with GK—one was a real estate project and the other had a policy focus. I had high ambitions of completing both projects and getting deeply involved in the organization. One of the advantages of working in a new place is that there are no family or social distractions. I was fully committed to spending most of my time and mental energy on Gawad Kalinga. However, there were two unpredictable bumps in the road that are often overlooked when deciding to work in another country.
First, I came down with a severe case of food poisoning that lasted a few weeks and required a trip to the emergency room. This was right in the middle of the H1N1 scare, so I was not only scared for myself, but also feared that I would transmit whatever I had to the community I was working with.
When I finally recovered enough to go back to the village I was working in, Barangay Bagong Silang, I received news that there was an unexpected death in the family. I made the choice to return home to the U.S. for 10 days.
Both of these events sidetracked my work, but I was able to come back and complete both of my projects. Luckily, my work was project-based, so I was able to make my own schedule and timeline for my deliverables.
I presented my two final projects to Ma’am Noi and Mayor Baby at the Gawad Kalinga Ateneo Offices. I was confident in my findings and my recommendations for the certificate and real estate programs. Highlights of my experience were immersing myself in the local town government, and getting to know all the people, and producing two deliverables that are promising to be of use and value to Gawad Kalinga.
