TBK Gives to El Nido Friends For HOPE Inc. "We Care, We Share"

I first got involved with El Nido Friends For HOPE Inc. "We Care, We Share" back in 2017 through Mama Jam Fernandez who established the group which was registered as a charity in the Philippines last year. Jam worked in Bahrain before he moved to Austria but comes from El Nido. As a Pinoy OFW he wanted to give back to his community and involved his OFW friends around the world to raise funds to buy gifts for Elementary kids in the El Nido area.

You can read more about Jam in this blog:

https://thebritishkabayan.blogspot.com/2020/09/inspiring-ofw-part-one-mama-jam.html

The El Nido Friends For HOPE Inc. "We Care, We Share" Facebook page is:

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100066949187228

Neil with Jam and one of the Head Teachers

In 2019 I attended my first HOPE event whilst I was staying in El Nido held at Bagon Bayon, Manlag and Sibaltan. I also involved my friends from El Nido Cove where I used to stay and was soon joined at the events by Ran and his family, Ritchelle and her boys, Marnel, Edxel and many others. When I met Jhoanna doing OJT at El Nido Cove she and her family joined us as well. By the time we got to Manlag I was bringing a crew of around 8 volunteers to help out at the events. One year Kuya Vin was on vacation with me in El Nido so he came and joined us and Ate Hazel in Bahrain donated to the charity.

Our team of Volunteers at one of the HOPE events

The numbers of kids who received gift bags containing teeth cleaning kits, reading books, colouring pens, colouring books etc grew from event to event from 200 to 400 elementary kids. The organisation of the events ( by Jam and his family) became more complex involving speakers, Barangay officials, games , lunch for the kids and then the volunteers , colour coded bags for each year, pick up trucks, vans, and following torrential rain and flooding of the road back to Cove , a fire engine to carry us back through the floods so Ran and Ritchelle could do their late shift at Cove!

Ran, Vin , Ritchelle and I ride through the floods on the Fire Engine

You can read about some of the previous events here:

https://thebritishkabayan.blogspot.com/2020/05/hope.html

https://thebritishkabayan.blogspot.com/2020/05/back-for-2020-and-bigger-and-better.html

Hardly surprisingly the HOPE events became a big part of our lives and everyone was asking when was the next event! Like everything else in Palawan COV19 and Typhoon Odette put a spanner in the works and so we were all really happy to hear that Jam was safely back in El Nido in January 2023 and had organised 2 events on 16 and 17 January in the El Nido area.

Back in 2017 HOPE asked it’s sponsors if they would like to “Adopt a child” and I was one of the first to do so in 2017 sponsoring Aimae who was then at Aberawan Elementary. I met her, her mum and her sister Mea at later events when she came to talk to the other kids about the benefits of having a sponsor and now there are several students sponsored by HOPE. I get regular updates through the charity on Aimae’s performance at school and am so proud of her excellent school results.

Aimae talks to the students when she was 10 years old

So far I have sponsored Aimae for 6 years and donated 108,000 Philippine pesos (£1,614 ) and 2023 will be the 6^th year I have donated to the charity to help buy the gifts for the children , giving a total of 83,841 Philippine Pesos ( £1,253) over the years.

Kuya Ran handing out the gift bags

I have to say that the HOPE events are the highlight of my year to see all those smiling faces saying “Salamat Po” ( thank you) as they receive their gift bag and then posing for the photos, enjoying the games, selecting their Tsinellas ( sandals, flip flops) and having one student in each year make a short thank you speech. I also have to say that when we get back to the hotel, we are all totally exhausted.

Jam is excellent at getting everything organised from contacting the schools and officials, arranging banners, tee shirts, volunteers, providing transport and arranging food and drinks for the students and volunteers, sound systems etc. He buys all the gifts, reminds us all when our sponsorship is due, updates us with the latest information from our students and photos and videos of the events through their Facebook page . There is an awful lot of work that goes on behind the scenes from his whole family to make everything run smoothly.

One of the beautiful schools we visited

I always remember my first HOPE event and each year I am amazed by the beautiful school grounds, always spacious and grassy, safe, colourful and with plenty of trees and noticeboards and activities like gardening, play areas and recycling. I am told a lot of this is down to the Parent Teacher Associations (PTA) who come in to the school during the vacations to paint and tidy up the grounds. At Sibaltan, where the school is beside the sea my good friend Mars took over as Chair of the PTA and soon raised funds to put a roof on the assembly area. Now as she is so busy with Marz enterprises her husband Reymond runs the PTA. One of my other fond memories of the HOPE event at Sibaltan was having a relaxing massage and facial on the beach from the Mars enterprises team with Kuya Vin. Our faces were covered with cucumber, honey and yogurt so whilst we could not see we could hear the chattering voices of the elementary kids laughing and joking in Tagalog as they went past on the beach. Mars later told us they were kids from the Elementary school we had visited the day before with HOPE laughing at the “Maputing Tao” (white man) with cucumber on his eyes and yogurt and honey over his face!

Another great feature of HOPE is they always remember my Birthdays and for my 60th Birthday I had a video from HOPE ( Happy 60th Birthday Tatay from HOPE ) with birthday wishes from the teachers at the various schools and many of the Volunteers and supporters like Chefs Arnel and Jeremy and of course Mama Jam in Austria! It is like one big happy family.

Sadly both of the 2023 events was cancelled due to the heavy rain. I got a message just after Midnight on Monday when our power and phone signal returned from Mama Jam to say:

“Kuya, the outreach tom is cancelled because of the rain roads will be difficult going to Teneguiban”

Thanks to Benny for sending me these pictures of El Nido

Then the next day when I met up with Mama Jam he told me the second school had cancelled, after postponing by a day, as all the kids had colds ( so did Mama Jam and I after all the rain!)

Such a pity after I had travelled 5 hours from Puerto for the event and Ran had made changes to his shift to be free in the day time. However I also had concerned messages from my neighbour Benny in Puerto asking if I was ok and sending me these pictures of El Nido. I was glad I had not gone to El Nido after all. It rained most of the night in Nacpan but after breakfast at Sunmai Chester and I managed to get a walk on the beach and discovered a new part of Nacpan I had not seen before ( see my Nacpan Blog here ( https://thebritishkabayan.blogspot.com/2023/01/tbk-travels-to-nacpan-beach.html )

The rain was so bad many streets in El Nido were flooded on Sunday

The good news is that I found out Ran now works in El Nido ( congratulations on your well deserved promotion) and so he , Jam and I arranged to have dinner together on Tuesday night at Tandikan cottages. Unfortunately I had to cancel that as I forgot to take Chester's dog food- and none could be found in El Nido so I drove back to Nacpan to feed him.

You can see a vlog about our day in El Nido here: