More than five years since Typhoon Ondoy (international code name Ketsana) destroyed their shanties along the esteros on Pasig River, families now living in a resettlement site in Calauan, Laguna, have started to generate their own income from raising ducks, selling fruit jams and other livelihood activities.
Still, challenges continue to hound the self-employed residents of Bayanijuan sa Southville 7.
Mercedita Daro, a 47-year-old mother who plants vegetables in her small garden, carries up to 10 kilos of papaya, alugbati and other fresh produce on her back every day, and sells them to the market kilometers away near the foot of the mountain. “Mahirap talaga pero kailangang kumayod (It’s tough, but I need to work hard),” she said.
Recently, Daro became one of the lucky recipients of 10 pedicabs awarded to self-employed Southville 7 residents by Dutch banking giant ING Bank through its “ING Bike for Livelihood” project.
A partnership with ABS-CBN Lingkod Kapamilya Foundation, the project aims to promote nonmotorized mobility among the self-employed who are running their small enterprise in the village. The locally sourced pedicabs are inspired by no less than the Dutch tradition of biking.
“These are people who come from various backgrounds and will use the pedicabs for different purposes: bringing the community kids to school; delivering mineral water; and selling their goods,” ING Bank Country Manager and Managing Director Consuelo D. Garcia said. “Their new bicycles will help them expand their client reach and seize more opportunities.”
Many of the pedicab beneficiaries hailed from the ING Village, which was built by ING Bank using proceeds from a one-day running event it mounted in 2010 to celebrate its 20th year in the Philippines. Together with Habitat for Humanity, ING Bank built the second ING Village to provide shelter to a number of informal settlers hit by Ondoy. The first ING Village was built in Baseco, housing 170 families whose homes were damaged by fire.
Bayanijuan sa Calauan Project Head Leah Bautista of Lingkod Kapamilya cited the multisectoral approach in building and sustaining the Calauan village. “These are different NGO [non-governmental organization] partners coming together to help these families get better integrated in their new community,” Bautista said of the 107-hectare resettlement site.
Part of empowering the pedicab beneficiaries is a 20-percent equity stake in the bicycle units, which they will pay monthly to the Humanityville Homeowners Association over one year. Payments will be funneled into more community projects, such as livelihood trainings.
“This will give them a sense of ownership and heighten their responsibility over the bicycle, which symbolizes renewed hope for them,” Garcia said.
For 50-year-old beneficiary Antonio Macairan, the orange-and-blue pedicab is indeed symbolic of new beginnings.
After doing odd jobs in Manila; staying in his hometown in Samar for over a decade, and seeing his modest house in Paco ravaged by Ondoy, he started over at Humanityville and met the woman he would marry at his ripe age.
“Nagsimula ako sa wala, kaya walang maliit o malaking tulong (I started from nothing, so there is no help too small or too big for me),” said Macairan, who plans to use the bicycle for bringing kids to schools.
The pedicabs are also part of ING Bank’s multipronged approach to empowering people and communities to “stay a step ahead in life and in business,” which is its avowed corporate mission. For a decade now, its social responsibility arm—ING Foundation—has already introduced programs aimed to improve shelter, education, environment and livelihood, sustained by the fund-raising efforts of its network of employee volunteers here and abroad.
“Poverty is the absence of opportunity, as they say. So we build initiatives that will uplift these people. But it is ultimately their next empowered move that will help them realize their own vision for a better future,” ING Bank’s Garcia said.