Where do I begin my GKY GAT experience? By CHRISTINE STANLEY
Words cannot express how GK has changed so many parts of my life. The way I work, the way I think and the way I pray.
The GK experience has allowed me to make invaluable friendships not only with my companions but also to those young and old I met each day of the trip.
Our major group goal was to learn more about GK . I didn't realise what depth this would happen. I guess for us that are frequent travellers to the Philippines we see the poor within the country all the time; as soon as you arrive at the airport you hear the words 'Mabuhay!'. Then you travel outside and smell, hear and see the poverty that consumes the country.
This experience has allowed me to really spend time with people, people that are waiting for an opportunity for luck to arrive to them or if they are believers in God that He will one day bring them to a life in this world that extends beyond begging for food, scavenging through rubbish or gambling what little they have to wait for luck to come. This was the life for many people that we had the privilege to meet and to also see how such a program like Gawad Kalinga has changed their lives.
Another highlight for me is getting to know the people at GK Brookside, especially the youth and the kids, they made me feel so much at home and I will always cherish the friendship they gave me and letting me play volleyball with them.
Amongst many memorable moments it's difficult to choose one to share as every day and hour spent with people I chose to make the most of it.
Insights into the Sibol program taught me so much, especially coming from young members of this newly revived community. But I guess young members of our community is where you will find true honesty, there is still nothing like the innocence of a child.
In a classroom on GK Prayer Mountain, Antipolo is where we met our new friends from Sibol. After some pep talks from Ate Maita, who is the co-ordinator for the Sibol program where we were taught how to read books to children, a lesson that many of us realised that we had needed and we will use in the future. Our book was 'Titoy's magical chair'. The story was relevant to our mission, it was about a boy describing his friend who was in a wheel chair and used his imagination to go anywhere he wished to go.
The puzzled faces on our new classmates when my companions and I turned into airplanes, trains, frogs, dragonflies and tilapias, the face looked at us in awe. Our activity was then to make paper aeroplanes then to write on our planes where we dream to go, then fly them. My dreams were to go to Europe. Some of our classmates wanted to go to Jollibee, McDonalds, Mega Mall and the USA.
I guess we learnt here that our dreams are only as big as what we dare to learn about the world and as for our young friends their worlds have been limited to the compoundsof their villages but now have the opportunity to read books and learn about life outside their 'barangays' (towns), and outside the Philippines.
We stayed only a short time, but made friends who did not want to let us leave.
I have since learnt that 'sibol' can be translated in English as 'new beginning'. After an afternoon with them I realised it was a fitting name for such a group... that with the help of GK they have the opportunity to dream and turn dreams into reality. Hopefully we will see our friends again and see how their dreams become bigger thanks to GK.
In a classroom on GK Prayer Mountain, Antipolo is where we met our new friends from Sibol. After some pep talks from Ate Maita, who is the co-ordinator for the Sibol program where we were taught how to read books to children, a lesson that many of us realised that we had needed and we will use in the future. Our book was 'Titoy's magical chair'. The story was relevant to our mission, it was about a boy describing his friend who was in a wheel chair and used his imagination to go anywhere he wished to go.
