Rotary Notes 5: Relief Operations in Lower Bicutan, Taguig

The recent heavy flooding in Metro Manila and other neighboring provinces resulted to some three million people who have been directly affected. Our Rotary Club of Taguig Fort Bonifacio (RI District 3830), through the efforts of President Rose Antonio, partnered with RC Makati President Reuben Valerio, in distributing food items to victims of flooding in Lower Bicutan, Taguig City, last Friday, August 10.

Upper photo: RC Makati President Reuben, clubmate Carmen Penalosa, Rose's son, President Rose, me, clubmate Eric Lucero, and Past District Governor (PDG) Sid Garcia. Most of these photos are from President Rose's camera.

We had a short chat with President Reuben. He said that for their club, money was not a problem as they received lots of cash donations from club members, also from their brother clubs abroad. District Governor-Elect (DGE) Robert Kuan for instance, received a call from his classmate DGE from an RI District in Taiwan and asked how things are in the country. His classmate simply donated $5,000 just for the relief-donations. This is one thing I like in Rotary or other voluntary charity organization, some rich individuals and Rotarians here in the country or abroad have no qualms in digging resources from their own pockets and give away to charity at zero politics, zero taxation, zero coercion involved.

There were four of us from our club, plus President Rose's son and driver. This is her pick up, full of food items for distribution. Eric's car is nice here, small but full of items for donation. I hitched a ride with him.

This is the small village in Lower Bicutan that we visited. The floodwater has not receded yet, two days after the heavy rains have stopped.

Lower photo, these children are in danger of getting leptospirosis and other water-borne diseases as the water is muddy and dirty.

The Barangay Health Worker (BHW), a city hall employee assigned to barangays to provide health and sanitation programs and services, estimated that there were less than 100 households in this area. The food packages we brought were just enough for them. Plus extra food packages for other affected families outside of this small village, delivered at the BHW office.

We were done distributing the goods in about 20 minutes. Thanks to my club, thanks to Rotary Club of Makati. We have done our small share in helping the flood affected families.

More volunteerism and civil society role, that is what we need in building a peaceful and dynamic society. Not in having more government, more coercion.
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See also:
Rotary Notes 1: Barangay Roads and Solar Panels, August 30, 2010

Rotary Notes 2: Climate, Carbon and Cancun, December 14, 2010

Rotary Notes 3: TRF, Global Grants and Civil Society, June 17, 2012

Rotary Notes 4: Citizen Self Reliance, Public Image, July 16, 2012

CSOs and State 10: The Role of Civil Society, June 15, 2010
CSOs and State 11: Rights and Responsibilities, Liberal Civil Society, July 11, 2010

CSOs and State 12: From NGOs to GFOs, February 26, 2012

CSOs and State 13: Technology, Omidyar Network and Governments, May 14, 2012

Rotary Notes 1: Barangay Roads and Solar Panels

This morning, I joined our club President (Rotary Club of Taguig Fort Bonifacio) Niel Antonio and potential clubmate Eric Lucero, in going to a remote barangay in Boso-boso, Antipolo, Rizal. Niel's company will donate solar panels to that barangay which until now has no electricity yet. This will be a club project for the indigenous people, Mangyans, who live in that part of the Sierra Madre mountains. We will go there first to meet the barangay captain or village leader, other barangay officials to schedule a turn-over ceremony.

The road going there is bad, one would need a 4x4 vehicle with big tires to hopefully deal with the situation. In many mountainous barangays in the Philippines, barangay roads are generally ugly. Exceptions are the barangays in big and famous mountain cities like Baguio and Tagaytay.

Eric's 4x4 vehicle had difficulty negotiating the road. The engine was powerful, but the tires, though big by most cars' standard, were still not big enough for the deep canals created by flash floods.

It's good that there were many barrio folks who were going home and were walking up. They helped us get Eric's car out of the deep mud.

We had to cancel the trip as we pitied the car and we lost time just negotiating the bad roads. Even if we can tackle that part, we still have to walk for at least 30 minutes to reach the community as the bad and muddy roads will show up again up there. We will schedule another trip in the coming weeks.

By the way, here's one jeepney that we met on our way up. The road is bad, only very few vehicles woould enter the barrio, and people have to sit on top of the jeepney just to catch a trip as the next trip will be several hours away.

About solar panels and solar energy, I have no opposition to this renewable energy, I support it. These are technological developments that will add more choices for the people on the kind of electricity sources they can use for their households and community structures.

What I oppose is when governments subsidize the manufacturers of solar and wind farms purportedly to "save the planet." If people truly believe in doing their share to reduce their carbon footprints, then they should patronize those renewable energy sources even without government subsidy. Governments have no money of their own to allocate and dispense subsidies, except what they take away from the pockets and savings of the taxpayers.

This is the solar panel that Niel's company is importing and selling here. It's cool, it's relatively light. From left to right: Niel's helper, Niel, me, Eric and Niel's other helper.

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Childcare 2: Rotary DTP Vaccination

I belong to a small club, the Rotary Club of Taguig Fort Bonifacio of RI District 3830 and we do not have much community projects. But my District Governor when I was a Club President in RY 2006-07, Past District Governor (PDG) Rafael "Butch" Francisco, has a kind heart for our less privileged countrymen.

Yesterday, PDG Butch celebrated his birthday, May 23, among several thousand children 4-6 years old and their parents (mostly mothers), in Dipteria-Tetanus-Pertusis (DTP) vaccination project. It was held in Pasay Sports Plaza. I wasn’t there yesterday, but this morning, May 24, I attended the 2nd day of the activity. It was held in Malibay Sports Gym, also in Pasay.

The two-days activity was jointly sponsored by the Rotary Club of Pasay North, D3810, and Rotary Club of Paranaque East (RCPE), D3830. Funding for this rather expensive but worthy project mainly came from PAGCOR, Where PDG Butch is the President, in coordination with VAXEN, a young but big distributor of vaccines in the country. Other rotary clubs from D3830 also pitched in various support like food and drinks for the hundred-plus people involved in the 2-days activity.

The Pasay City government also extended support by mobilizing the city health and social welfare departments, their staff moving house to house to distribute pre-registration forms for families with children 4-6 years old. I think this is an efficient system. First, only parents or guardians of children 4-6 years will be given the registration form, and only the targeted beneficiaries, Pasay residents, will be served. Well if the sponsors bought vaccines for 4,000 children and 10,000 will come from various cities, then you will have logistical nightmares and thousands of disgruntled parents and guardians who will say more bad things than good about Rotary.

When I arrived at Malibay Sports Gym a little past 9am, there were hundreds of parents with their respective children already. I immediately went to Gov. Butch to greet him a (belated) happy birthday. As time goes, more parents with their toddlers were coming.

PP Rene Aquino of RCPE served as the MC. He briefly introduced what the project is all about, and what the vaccines can do for their children. The parents/guardians and their toddlers happily greeted Gov. Butch on his worthy birthday project.

PDG Butch (3rd from left) with RCPE guys.

Then the vaccination started. A long line of eager parents who will save some P1,000 for the vaccine if purchased in commercial clinics, was formed. There were 4 tables with 2 health personnel in each table, so 8 toddlers can be served at the same time. And this is where “children’s drama” unfurled.

Although about 70 percent of the children did not cry during the “injection”, a portion of the 30 percent who cried really cried wildly! I surmised they were already crying and resisting while queuing, and their screaming was directly proportional to their distance to the attending health personnel holding the syringe. That is, 2 meters away, the cries were loud. When they were face to face with the health staff, they were screaming to the top of their lungs, really huge teardrops, waggling and kicking, and looking at the health personnel as if the latter are the most evil persons on Earth!

Since I was finding out how I can help since the city welfare staff are in charge of making the long lines in order, I just went to those children who cried the loudest. I did not intend to pacify them because I knew they won’t listen to me since they do not know me, so I went to hold their waggling and kicking feet! When the “injection” is over – usually in just about 3 seconds – these children were wondering if all their resistance was worth the very brief pain of the needle. I was kidding their mothers or guardians, “mas mahaba pa ang iyak kesa injection ah”, to which they nodded smiling or laughing.

PDG Butch was walking around distributing lollipop candy to children who finish the “injection”. By that time, even those who cried wildly were already pacified. The parents were obviously very happy – you can see it in their eyes and smiles – that their toddlers now have protection against those 3 dangerous diseases.

With the quick and systematic vaccination process, the vaccination was over in about an hour covering several hundred, or perhaps a thousand, children. But the team did not leave since there were still other parents with their toddlers coming. They will wait and do their work until 3pm today, the designated closing time. I heard that the volume of children yesterday was much larger than today.

Projects like this makes you proud of being a Rotarian. When I got out of the sports gym, I realized I needed a haircut. Ahh, there’s a barber shop nearby...