Barangay Encanto

Gawad Kalinga, meaning “to give care,” is the name of the largest Filipino Non-profit agency. Founded by last year’s Filipino social entrepreneur of the year, Tony Meloto, this organization started out building houses in communities under extreme poverty, and now does much more. Barangay Encanto (Enchanted Village), located just a couple hours outside of Manila, is their model site. What they have done here is pretty extraordinary. This village was once occupied primarily by anti-government rebels, and displaced squatters from Manila. Gawad Kalinga (GK) began building houses in this location about 8 years ago, and once those were constructed went to work helping local residents use their knowledge and skills to start micro-enterprises. As Tony describes it, the first step is restoring dignity, then comes empowerment. There are about 6 businesses currently operating out of this village. They are selling bamboo furniture and bikes, health and beauty products, duck eggs, goat cheese, handwoven bags, and bottled iced tea. These products use all natural, locally grown raw materials, and are made by local residents. Each business is owned by local entrepreneurs. The village has a fully functioning restaurant, and they are currently building a bed and breakfast in order to attract tourists.

Hybrid Social Solutions, the company I am working for, has been active in this village for some time providing solar lanterns. While they have electricity in some parts of the village, many houses do not. In addition, they often lose power for various reasons. Our most recent project is a solar computer lab. I spent some time with our technician going around to electronics manufacturers searching for the computer monitor that uses the fewest watts per hour. The money for the construction of this computer lab was donated, but the vision is that there will be a small hourly charge to use the machines. Like everything else in this village, it is a strange mix of charity (capital cost is donated) and enterprise (revenue covers operating expenses). We also installed a solar home yesterday (donated), including two lanterns, a TV, and a Dvd player. For those of you questioning the wisdom of donating a Dvd player to a family living in extreme poverty, I’m with you.

Finally, we recently installed a Starfish water purification system in their kitchen area. Starfish water purification technology is manufactured by Starfish Hong Kong, and Hybrid Social solutions is the exclusive distributor in the Philippines. Prices and participation may vary.

This technology is now operational, pending bacteriological testing (fingers crossed), and will be the next GK enterprise. They will be bottling and selling Enchanted Spring purified mineral water. This water will be sold to local residents, many of whom use captured rain water for bathing and washing dishes. Some use this water for drinking, but many buy bottled water (5g jugs) from outside the village, particularly for their children. The restaurant also buys water from outside the village, and consumes a substantial amount. The owners of the water business will fill 5g Jugs and sell them to local residents as well as the restaurant. This brings revenue to the owners and staff working at the filling station, and also provides low-cost water to village residents (jugs will be sold for 20 pesos, rather than the 35 that residents currently pay. 20 pesos is roughly $.50).

In addition, Enchanted Spring water will be sold at a higher markup in the nearby town. Profit sharing from the filling station will be shared among GK, the local entrepreneur managing the station, the employees filling bottles, and the community. The community dividend will be used to build a sanitation area behind the filling station, complete with toilets, showers, and laundry facilities.

I have had some difficulty coordinating the exchanges between Starfish and staff onsite at the village, so made sure to be onsite for the next meeting. I arrived on tuesday with my colleague Ronel, our solar technician, after riding the subway, a bus, a trike, and a jeepney. I spent the morning meeting with the three staff and making sure that everything was in order for a visit from Starfish technicians. This didn’t take much time, I just needed to ensure that the three main point people would be onsite Wednesday, and make sure that we had the door key to access the machine. Starfish would be arriving the following morning to train staff and take samples for testing.

At this point it was about 11am, and I spent a couple hours helping (more like watching) Ronel install solar devices in a local home and train the family in how to use the technology. After lunch, Ronel went back to Manila and I was put to work by Mira, a filipina with a masters in agriculture, who has decided to spend the year living and working in enchanted village. I spent the afternoon planting grass and learning about the different crops currently growing at the farm.

Once 6:00 rolled around, all of the men working in the village met up at...the basketball court! And by court, I mean hoop attached to a tree on the side of the road. Shots from the left side of the court were easily blocked by low hanging branches. But every young guy in the village must have been out there, and they were GOOD. I may or may not have gotten schooled by a guy wearing one flip flop. He wasn’t barefoot. He wasn’t wearing flip flops. He was wearing one flip flop. And...this cat could ball, man. In general all of them were very talented, amazing ability to cut in flip flops. A little after 7 it got pretty dark and games kind of died down. I made a joke about how we should put a solar lantern up in the tree, and then noticed a guy climbing the tree to turn on lights already installed. After dumping rain water out of one of the bulbs, we had two functioning lights and played night ball for about an hour. We mostly played 3v3, and they insisted that I stay on the court even when my team lost.

I arrived at the restaurant around 8, late for dinner, but Mira had made sure the kitchen didn’t close before I could eat. While we were eating dinner, Remy, the mom from the house where Ronel had installed the solar appliances came by with another volunteer. Apparently the solar Dvd player was not working, and they believed I could fix it. I was envisioning some type of technical battery malfunction which I would have no idea how to fix, but said I would try to help. The whole family was gathered around the TV, and the current Dvd wouldn’t play at all. After taking it out I could see that it was badly scratched. They had one other Dvd - Batman, the Dark Knight. This one started up the menu screen immediately, and I explained to them that the other Dvd was just too damaged. Ok, they said, looking back at the TV Screen, which button is play? I looked at them quizzically for what I hope was only a moment, and then came to the realization that the Dvd player only had the shapes that I recognize as play, stop, FF, etc. Ronel hadn’t covered this in the training, assuming that they knew what these buttons meant, but they had no idea! If you think about it, they aren’t really all that intuitive, and must just look like hieroglyphs if you haven’t seen them before. I hate to call you out Mom, especially since you are such a tech whiz these days, but explaining the function of each button totally reminded me of helping you in your early three-remote days.

That night I slept in a dorm underneath a white mosquito net, which made me feel like a princess. I expressed this feeling to my roommates, volunteers from the Philippine Airforce, who found it quite amusing.