2-Starting Work

Bacolod city has a population comparable to Newcastle which was a welcome change after the hustle and bustle of Metro Manila. It is situated in a beautiful setting - surrounded by cane fields, dotted with palm trees and lourded over by Kanlaon Volcano (which is still active!). The typhoon that ripped through the Philippines in the week before I left Australia luckily narrowly missed Bacolod, but this is typhoon season, and not uncommon for the Philippines to be hit by 20 typhoons a year. I have, however, experienced my first earthquake. While the epicentre was 60km away, it was apparently felt at level 4 on the Richter scale here in Bacolod at 2.15am … I don’t know how, but I slept right through it! No reports of any damage or injuries.

I was hosted for my first week with the family of my GK supervisor, a well known family in Bacolod. In fact the main street of the city was named after his great grandfather who led a bloodless rebellion against the Spanish at the time of occupation.

For my first week of work, I have tried to be a sponge and absorb the projects and how the organisation works. I think I’ve spent a total of about 2 hours in the office itself, in downtown Bacolod. Most of the week has been spent visiting various project sites, or meeting project stakeholders at one of the nice cafes in the more cosmopolitan ‘uptown’ area. Despite the lower population density in Bacolod compared to Manila, there is a very visible gap between the “haves” and the “have nots”.

What has become most apparent during my first week of work is that GK is not simply about providing housing for the poor, it is about building communities, of which housing is merely one part. The process begins with land acquisition. In some cases it is donated by wealthy land owners, in other cases an agreement is drawn up with the local municipality. This week, for example, we were invited to meet with the Mayor of a town in the north of the province who has recently purchased 7.5ha and wanted to talk with us about the process of creating a GK village on that site. The next step is securing the funding, which comes from a variety of sources. For example, this week we met with the alumni of one of the catholic high schools in the city. Next year it celebrates its 50th anniversary, and to commemorate the milestone, they are funding a house for every class that has graduated. But before any plans are drawn, the beneficiaries must be chosen from amongst the poorest of the poor. They are generally illegal squatters living in shanty towns on river banks or on private or government land. I was taken to visit one of the slum areas to gain an understanding of the living environment the people endure. In order to be accepted as beneficiaries, they must agree to certain values such as no gambolling, no drinking and no prostitution in the village and they must also agree to provide 200 hours of “sweat equity” to construct the houses. This is a major part of the process as it promotes the sense of community through working together and building each others houses.

Another aspect of the organisation that struck me is that the process doesn’t end when the houses are complete. Most villages will have a multi-purpose hall and some land set aside for productivity (e.g. growing crops or grazing goats etc). Some villages will have a school, and some will have a health clinic. And through the parallel programs for productivity, education, health etc, GK volunteers will visit the villages to run sessions with the community. At one of the villages, students of the local Medical College, do rounds twice a week as part of their training. At another village, the men who aquired the building skills through participating in the construction of their own homes, are now constructing more up-market versions of the standard design for purchase by local government workers, and getting paid for it.

Each GK village has a volunteer Project Director who overseas the whole process on the ground. These project directors report to the Provincial head office of GK. In this case, the Province is Negros Occidental – the western half of the Island of Negros. Negros Occidental is a long narrow province about 200km from top to bottom covering an area of almost 8000km2. Bacolod is its capital. In the head office there is a team for each of the aspects of the community development i.e. a productivity team, an education team, a health team, a shelter team and so on. And this is where I come in. I am part of the Shelter team, along with Bob (the provincial area head), Joe (the senior Architect), Butch (the full time Architect) and Mik Mik (the parternships coordinator). We oversee the planning, design, construction and ongoing maintenance of the 32 or so new and existing GK sites scattered throughout the province.

The standard home is a 6m x 4m room, with a toilet cubicle in one corner. The construction is hollow block walls, rendered and painted, opaque glass louvred windows, concrete infill slab, steel roof frame and corrugated iron roof sheeting. The budget per house for materials is A$1,750. The labour is provided by the beneficiaries as I mentioned plus assistance from volunteers. As a result, the construction must be simple to enable construction by unskilled hands. Everything is manual. From time to time, often on a weekend, volunteers are called on to participate in a build. They may be local church or school groups and sometimes international visitors who use it as an opportunity for a team building exercise. This week, a group of young people from Hong Kong arrived to assist on one of the sites north of Bacolod where 10 new houses are being constructed. When the houses are built, the beneficiaries are encouraged to plant food crops between the houses and ornamental plants in the front.

Visiting the GK sites and meeting the delightful beneficiaries has made me all the more determined to learn the local dialect so I can communicate more deeply with the people. In one village, when we arrived, Josephine, a mother of 5 proudly came to greet us and insisted on chaperoning me around the village shading my white skin from the sun with her umberella! It was so touching and she couldn’t express enough how happy she was to be part of a GK community. In another village, all the children came to greet us and touched our hands to their foreheads – a sign of respect.

On Saturday I was lucky enough to attend a handover ceremony at a village in the north of the province. The site had 42 houses and a further 8 had recently been completed. It was very moving to see the presentation of the keys to the 8 families by the benefactor, a local cane processing plant magnate who provided the land and funded the project. The beneficiaries themselves were former rebels from the mountains who had surrendered. The children all gathered and sang the GK song in appreciation.

Through these numerous site visits with my counterpart, Butch, we have also got to know each other better and discovered we share many common interests such as mountain biking, coffee and taste in music. I am really looking forward to working with him and the shelter team over the next 10 months.

It was a challenge I put myself up for, and already the experience has challenged my emotions, my perceptions, my professional views and my values.