• About Samar

• Founder's Letter

• Livelihood

• Education

• Health Management

• Walk Against Poverty

• Book Drive

ABOUT US

About Samar

Samar is the third largest island in the Philippine archipelago (after Luzon and Mindanao). It is the size of Connecticut or the island of Jamaica - to give you some perspective. But despite its size, a good number of even the educated among us cannot place Samar on the Philippine map. A number think this third-largest island is part of the neighboring city of Tacloban (in the province of Leyte). Thus, Samar has, in a sense lost its sense of identity…it has ceased to exist in people’s minds. Samar is no longer a viable entity!  Samar’s statistics do not look good. In fact they tell us that this giant of an island is critically ill (to mention of few of her ailments):

• 75% of its children are malnourished

•  The denudation of Samar’s once lush rain forests virtually wiped out the livelihood (fishing and farming) of the population

• Samar has one of the lowest literacy rates in the Philippines

• Children do not have access to books or any reading material; even schools do not have libraries (teachers teach geography without maps; teach English without dictionaries)

• Hospitals do not have the basic medical equipment and supplies to treat even the most treatable (though deadly for those in Samar) diseases like dysentery and diarrhea.

• No blood bank

• No ambulances to transport critically ill or injured people anywhere

Founder's Letter

Dear Friends,
 

We welcome and thank you for visiting with us.  We hope your curiosity will result in an understanding of what poverty truly is and what we can do together to effectively wipe it off the map. 

The objective of Building Futures Together is to eradicate poverty one community at a time.  This is an extremely ambitious objective, and highly unlikely to be achieved, friends and colleagues have said to me.

After all, major organizations, including the United Nations, institutions, churches, governments, powerful and wealthy celebrities have lent their names and mammoth resources behind this war on poverty, plowing millions and billions almost incessantly to the effort over several decades!

I joined the battle against poverty in earnest on realization that individuals, families and communities living in dire want I had met decades ago as a child, are now their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. 

Is this divine design that you and I and our children and grandchildren live in relative comfort and two-thirds of the world’s population meander on this earth from birth to death living like sub humans? 

Seeing the exact same families living in poverty reared an ugly fact -- fathers and mothers of the poor are bequeathing poverty to their children and grandchildren! That is all they have to give!  Something is so very wrong.  Something is so very cruel.  All the resources pouring out of the cadre of institutions to help the poor and nothing has changed!  

So I took the step.  It was never a tentative one.  In my heart I felt and knew poverty can be eradicated.  With no funding or funds, I began this journey.  I chose to begin in the Island of Samar*  one of the poorest provinces in the Philippines and one I was familiar with (I was from there originally). I went into communities and met with anyone and everyone who had a story to tell and an opinion to share.

And it was through the poor themselves that I learned the fight against poverty is not and cannot be a fly over or a drive by.  The fight is and must be a deliberate, purposeful, and committed effort and must be over the long haul!!!  And while the approach must be multi dimensional since poverty is very complex, one cannot apply one salve for all the poor either (this is where we differ from the rest).

A top official from Barangay (barrio) Palale in Samar once told a crowd in my presence that the difference between Building Futures Together and everyone else who try to help the poor is that Building Futures Together is still in their community 10 years after we began, while others have come in, poked their heads,  injected them with some anti-poverty salve of some sort and moved on never to be seen or heard from again!

Poverty is deeply rooted; it involves people who are illiterate; with no access to healthcare, or hospitals or clinics; it involves people used and abused by the powers that be (political, religious, social) over centuries,  it involves people bypassed by accepted channels of communication and information further isolating these communities from resources that might be available to them.

The poor are entirely at a loss on paths to lead them out of poverty.  They have no maps to follow; no consultants to consult with; no support group;  no ladders to move up on!  They depend entirely on you and I to guide them out of one of the most devastating human disasters of all time – poverty!

Join us in this very challenging but satisfying journey. Our three prong programs of help and hope:  livelihood, education and health management, simultaneously applied one community at a time over a long haul, do alter lives while maintaining the dignity, self respect and more importantly, the  independence and freedom of those we help.

Sincerely,

Loudette N. Avelino