By David Zarraga | Project Coordinator
As 2017 comes to a close, we, GK USA's volunteers in the United States and on the ground in the Philippines, together with all the families who have benefited from your generosity, would like to say a heartfelt "Thank you!" to you, our donors, for the support you have given our home-building project this year. As you will see below, your contributions have fueled a multi-faceted approach to fighting poverty, and we are proud to share this year's success with you. We hope you continue to support our cause as the Gawad Kalinga USA-Boston team endeavors to replicate this model within other communities beyond GK Ark of Noah.
Allow us to share an update covering this past quarter's activities at GK Ark of Noah and beyond:
1. Home building: home-building activities continued at GK Ark of Noah this period as beneficiary families and volunteers helped 10 more families move in to new homes in time for the holidays. This count is part of the 50 homes already funded as mentioned in our previous report.
2. Flood mitigation: An in-depth costing and topography study is being conducted by city government engineers at GK Ark of Noah and surrounding areas to develop a specific flood mitigation plan that we hope to fully fund by the end of 2018. We also hope to have a GK USA college intern provide additional support to the study in early 2018.
3. Livelihood development: the community's bakers continue to train themselves in the use of the equipment donated by interns from Gawad Kaliga France. The community hopes to sell baked goods to residents of surrounding towns in 2018. GK USA-Boston is in the process of identifying 2018 summer interns to travel to Bocaue to conduct business management training for backyard enterprises.
4. Electronic medical records implementation: Tia de Vera, a high school graduate from New Hampshire and GK USA intern, concluded a six-week internship in September to set up web-based electronic medical records software at GK Baliuag and GK Ark of Noah, both in Bulacan province. More importantly, Tia provided training in the use of the software to health volunteers at the communities. Baseline health metrics taken by nursing students from the Dr. Yanga College of Bocaue were entered into the EMR as part of this pilot program. The EMR will allow GK USA's community health interns and volunteers a way to easily track key metrics over time to measure the impact of health-related interventions implemented at these communities.
5. Contributions and pledges from the local government and local institutions: Led by barangay captain Renn Eusebio, the local government has pledged funds for 2018 to build a community livelihood center and community basketball court at GK Ark of Noah to serve as the epicenter for livelihood training and community commerce for GK Ark of Noah and surrounding towns.
6. Childhood nutrition: Aside from the electronic health records pilot program, another success from community health initiatives this period comes from the nutrition-focused urban garden program implemented by Gregory Zandrow, a GK USA intern from the University of Massachusetts Medical School. The urban garden program allowed residents to grow leafy and starchy vegetables at home, while providing information and training to cook and prepare the produce using local recipes. With the help of nursing students from Dr. Yanga College, Greg was able to measure marked improvement in nutrition among GK Ark of Noah's children. Prior to the implementation of the urban gardening program, 16% of the community's children were underweight and 15% were stunted. A year after the program was implemented, none of the children were underweight, and only 1% could be considered stunted.
7. University student visits: with GK Ark of Noah becoming a hotbed of multi-faceted development, the community opened its doors to students from France, Singapore and the Philippines who wanted to observe, first-hand, the measures that the community was taking to emerge from debilitating poverty. This included the inclusion of GK Ark of Noah as an official site for the Ateneo de Manila University Development Field Studies program. The first research visit by students of the ADFS program occurred in September 2017.
As you can see, your contributions towards building homes at Ark of Noah have empowered much more than a brick-and-mortar approach to fighting poverty. You are giving our families at Ark of Noah a fighting chance by empowering them with protection from the elements, tools and resources to track and maintain their health, and the equipment and training to bring entrepreneurial opportunities to their community. Your contributions, at any and all amounts, are precious because they are not only giving GK Ark of Noah's a leg up, they are helping to restore their dignity as human persons.
For that, and for all that you do for our cause, the entire GK USA and GK USA-Boston family would like to thank you.
Best regards,
David Zarraga and the GK USA-Boston Team
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