Brigada Eskwela 2018 - An outreach Program for the children of Nangalid
It was 3am when my alarm rang. A sign that we have to get up and prepare our things. I had a little sleep as the night before May 19, 2018, we are still printing additional T-shirts for our club members who will participate in the outreach program in Sitio Nangalid. And just before the dawn breaks, we are already on our way to Marilog District.
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| The struggle we experience while travelling. But all is worth it. |
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| Smile for we are about to share the blessings. |
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| Overloaded? Yes.. overloaded with joy. |
After 3 long hours of journey we reached Barangay Datu Salumay of Marilog District. Many locals there were waiting as if they knew we were coming. And by the time we took off from our bongo, they welcomed us and offered a ride. Our truck can’t penetrate the rough road since it rained hard the other day making it hard for a 2x2 truck to trail the muddy road. We decided to avail the ride for our things since we have 4 big boxes containing school supplies and sacks of donated books and traveled on foot to Sitio Nangalid. Along our journey, some skylab drivers offered a free ride to us which we happily availed.
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| Trekking the road leading to Sitio Nangalid. |
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When kuya driver offered us a free ride. Hitching at its best. lol
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As we arrived in the Panayangan Shelter of the Happy Forest Kids, our team LUMOC, together with TRIMMOC and Black Tribe Trekkers, started preparing the foods for our feeding program. All of us are hand-in-hand in preparing the foods for the children of Nangalid. The feeding program is also a celebration of our member’s love for each other as they celebrated their wedding anniversary with the kids. Our menu consists of Fried Chicken, Bam-i, Rice, Macaroni salad and a packed juice. A barber is also busy doing haircuts for the children.
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| Children availing free hair cut. |
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| Preparing the food for our feeding program |
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| A sumptuous chicken joy is now ready to be deep fried. |
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| Jeremy together with Miss Cathy and Reneboi are now frying the chicken. Yummy! |
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| Our best chef cook Lusai is getting the pancit done. |
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| while most LUMOC members are busy cooking the food, Ceejay and the members of TRIMMOC are also arranging the school supplies and the donated books. |
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| School supplies for the children of Nangalid. Thank you so much to all our sponsors. |
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| The donated educational books and encyclopedias. Thank you so much to all our donors. |
The program started at 12 noon, in time for lunch. It was cloudy when we decided to start distributing the school supplies and the food. We need to do it simultaneously in fear of rain. A prayer of appreciation and guidance was offered by Datu Dangkay to Panayangan before we formally started the distribution.
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| The distribution started at the kinder line until it reaches grade 7. |
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| The food is also being distributed simultaneously with the school supplies. |
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| All of us are hand in hand in the distribution process. |
Just before the heavy rain started, we finished our activity program with a huge success. All the school kits were delivered to all the children enrolled in Nangalid Elementary School. All children including their parents also had their equal share of the food we served. And of course, all the donated books were turned over to the library of Nangalid Elementary School and Happy Forest Kids shelter. A new flag was also turned over to the school admin. Two different vegetable seeds were given to Datu Dangkay. And of course, everyone was happy albeit tired.
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| Ngiting success. Pagod pero it's all worth it. |
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| A groupfie with the great leader - Datu Dangkay. |
With this fulfilling event I just took part of, I realised that a happy life isn’t always about how successful you are as an individual but how far you can reach out for others to be happy. It isn’t always how deep your pocket is but how enormous is your impact for other people’s lives.
Seeing them happy seems like the most beautiful scene I’ve always wanted to see. That warm feeling I get from the big smiles of the little kids enjoying their presence delivers a unique fuzzy sensation that surely melted my heart with overflowing joy. I am not living a wealthy life. I am a slave of my own work. And to be honest, I am not happy about how my life is going. I am not happy with my work either. Maybe, doing charity is my only liberation from all the stress life jabs on me. Somehow, whenever I am away from civilization, immersing with the IPs of the highlands is my total peace of mind. It feels like an emotional therapeutic nourishment, where, a session is needed from time to time to feed my dreaded soul. I don’t know how to sustain the resources to keep this vice going but I know for sure that I will find ways to fulfill this altruism. For living life with a purpose is living a happy life.
Before I end this post, I would like to say a huge thank you to all the sponsors and donors for this outreach event especially to the ones who personally contacted me to show their support.
- Mary Grace Dela Pena
- Emily Savador Guisehan
- Jonallier Perez of Mindanao Tourism Council
- June Lyn Lacandula
- Lilibeth Piamonte
THANK YOU SO MUCH!
Here's a video snippet of our Outreach Program:
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