Help Bring a Philippine Community Out of Poverty

Good day and warm greetings from the families of GK Ark of Noah in Bocaue, Bulacan in the Philippines!

We have wonderful news - we are in the process of verifying that our home-building endeavor at GK Ark of Noah is complete. From our last report in March of this year, we reported that the joint efforts of TripAdvisor, GlobalGiving, GK Boston and local Philippine donors have funded the building of 65 homes.  The “Help Bring a Philippine Community out of Poverty” project on GlobalGiving accounted for 5 of these homes.

The developments we narrate below reaffirm the tremendous positive impact that owning your own place to live has on a family’s quality of life and access to economic and educational opportunities, which in turn gives rise  to empowered, peaceful communities.

Imagine, in the 11 years since Gawad Kalinga began working with the families of GK Ark of Noah, and in the 3 years that you have been helping us fund more homes on GlobalGiving, we have seen:

• 3 children from the community graduate from college while on scholarship, and start their careers;
• Childhood malnutrition eradicated from the community through an urban garden community health program;
• 20-30 mothers from the community actively participate in a zumba-dance wellness program (and win a local dance competition, to boot);
• A community health center built by the local government on-premises, to serve the community and surrounding villages;
• The beginnings of a livelihood program with the establishment of a community kitchen and community center.

All of these could not have been possible without the flurry of home-building initially funded by the TripAdvisor Charitable Foundation, GlobalGiving, GK Boston and you for the first 35 homes in 2016.

As we await word on the completion of this project, we do have another cause at GK Ark of Noah to champion - the building of a flood mitigation and drainage system to ensure the proper evacuation of flood and waste water from the community. We will set up a separate project page on GlobalGiving for this initiative and we hope that you will support it with the same fervor as you have supported the building of homes at GK Ark of Noah.

For all the help and love that you have provided this community, we at GK USA thank you from the bottom of our hearts!

All the best,

David Zarraga and the Gawad Kalinga USA team