Volunteered in 2009
Site Location: Bacolod
Trip Emphasis: Agriculture and Technology
Major: Applied Mathematics; Environmental Economics and Policy
Email: christianblanco@berkeley.edu
Click through the slideshows below to see photos from Christian’s trip
Seeds of Prosperity: Gawad Kalinga
September 1, 2012
My affiliation with Gawad Kalinga (GK) started in high school. During my second year at De La Salle Zobel, I attended a youth build in Baseco Tondo, Manila. Tondo is the epitome of poverty in Manila. It has a population density of roughly 72,000 per square kilometer. It is the densest city in the world. The infamous Manila landfill, Smokey Mountain, is located in Tondo. My experience at the age of 14 ignited a question that I still struggle to answer until today: how do we eradicate poverty?
GK is an impetus for social concern and awareness. It challenged me to participate in one of the biggest social experiments in poverty alleviation. I was convinced that GK is a seed for prosperity. At the University of California Berkeley, I met Gabriel Catapang who studied Political Economy of Industrial Societies. He is also a GK advocate, and together, we established Gawad Kalinga at Berkeley.
Gabriel and I hoped to share our personal experiences with Gawad Kalinga to the Berkeley community as well as the greater San Francisco Bay Area community. We wanted to contribute to GK as researchers and academics, but at the same we wanted to introduce the immense vision of GK to academics and researchers.
I took a course in Technology and Development Economics at Berkeley that fueled my interest for GK and economics even more. Professor Boettiger introduced me to development economics. In her class, I gained more interest in exploring questions such as “how can technology improve the lives of the poor?”, “can we develop new business models that will incorporate the welfare of the poor?”, and “does there exist a model that is both sustainable and practical for eradicating poverty in the Philippines?”
The summer following that course, I went back to the Philippines to volunteer with GK. I was hoping to address the plethora of questions that brewed during my development economics course. I spent 10 days in a farming village in Bacolod and observed first hand the hurdles and successes of GK. After that summer, I went back to the US with more questions than answers. This meant that there is still a lot of room to grow.
I saw firsthand the potential of GK’s model in Bacolod. They provide farmers and workers with shelter so that they can focus on being productive. GK trains them how to farm sustainably, so they are able to provide food for themselves. They can also sell excess crops to the market. At the time I was visiting, GK had plans of having student volunteers record which crops farmers keep or sell. This type of information can help GK understand how farmers make decisions, and it can enable them to understand some of the issues farmers face.
GK’s approach is one that starts with empowering the lives of the poor. They claim that the effectiveness of their approach rests on this. There is something that always reassures me whenever I interact with GK. The GK caretakers and volunteers never cease to inspire me with their effort and desire to carefully listen to the challenges that these farmers face.
I am convinced that GK is a case where practice is a step ahead of theory. I imagine that many of GK’s programs will serve as a blueprint in helping us understand how we can sustainably eradicate poverty. For example, GK’s “Enchanted Farm” is a great platform to explore how social entrepreneurs interact with local farmers (http://gk1world.com/enchanted-farm-faqs#SocialEnterprises). I hope that many more students can hear about GK’s model for solving poverty.
Today, I am a graduate student at UCLA, and I continue to receive e-mails from students who are interested in engaging with Gawad Kalinga. I hope that the tiny seed that Gabriel and I planted at UC Berkeley will continue to grow and attract more students to explore GK and its mission to eradicate poverty.
Gawad Kalinga at Berkeley 