Happy birthday, Joven! His mother isn’t sure whether Joven turns five or six today, but after having given birth 14 times (with eight children surviving) and living on a husband’s daily income of Php 180, we can’t blame her if she can no longer keep track. We first met Joven in Davao Occidental when he...
For the Mercado family, rising from the ashes is not a figure of speech. It’s literal and real. We first met this family in Barangay Mansilingan, Bacolod City, when we enrolled one of the kids in NVC’s Mingo Meals nutrition program. The family only lived off the few scraps that Reynaldo could gather and sell,...
Fire hit 215 family homes in the coastal barangay of Banago in Bacolod City on June 10, 2019. Within the day, NVC’s Food Shuttle, Mingoy, was at the site to serve Mingo champorado and pan de sal to all the affected residents. Among the families we met were the Dellosas. As Ruel pointed out his...
We chanced upon Noelito, a Peter Project fisherman and it was a happy reunion because he had just caught a mix of fish that would bring him at least Php 1,590 for the day. Each time we meet one like him, we always remember to whisper a prayer for blessings and graces upon the 4,947...
In the village of Tanguango, up in the mountains of Capalong, Davao del Norte, four classrooms are rising to serve the children of the community, who used to walk up and down mountain trails and cross wide rivers–swimming through them when their parents could not afford the Php 5 fare on a raft. Here where...
Sometime last year, we read the story of a boy who died of malnutrition in a village called Glab in the far reaches of Zamboanga del Sur in Mindanao. We set out to search for the area, difficult and challenging though it was, because we knew that if there was news of one malnourished child,...
NVC’s Peter Project, aimed at helping fisherfolk, was named after St. Peter the Apostle, himself a fisherman. A popular Easter story is about Peter, who decides to fish after Jesus’ death and is joined by the other disciples. They come up with nothing until the resurrected Jesus appears, and the resulting catch is so great...
We’ve done it 4,943 times already, and the story is often the same: a simple dream of simply being able to fish. But knowing that just one Peter Project boat can make a dream come true still continues to warm our hearts. Rodolfo dreamed of a boat and found a secondhand one to purchase on...
If you gave or received a card like this one, know NVC has started–with proceeds from the sales–to enroll 40 children in NVC’s Mingo Meals nutrition program that will provide them with daily access to this instant meal made of rice, mongo and malunggay for six months. The children come from an impoverished shoreline village...
NVC’s Project Joseph was envisioned to provide skilled persons with a single tool or piece of equipment that they need to jumpstart them into a better future for their families. That’s how John Rell Flores began to earn better when he received his pedicab in August 2017 through the project. But John did something better....
