Punzi's Corner Blog: Ramon Magsaysay Awards a slap in NHA's face

Tuesday, August 01, 2006
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Ramon Magsaysay Awards a slap in NHA's face

My dad mentioned today that Antonio Meloto and the Gawad Kalinga Foundation will receive the 2006 Magsaysay Awards for Community Service.

In Bagong Silang, Meloto immersed himself in the lives of slum dwellers. He learned that "a slum environment develops slum behavior." But he also found goodness, even in the hardened gang members he met there. Slum dwellers needed love and spiritual nourishment, it was clear. But they also needed dignity and decent living conditions. It was not enough to pray for them, he decided. "We should do something!"

Meloto decided to build houses. Drawing support and volunteers from Couples for Christ, he began transforming the neediest area of Bagong Silang into a viable neighborhood with safe, sturdy, and attractive homes—the first Gawad Kalinga village. In doing so, he formulated guidelines for later Gawad Kalinga projects. New homes would be allotted only to the poorest families. They could not be sold. And although the beneficiaries would not have to pay for their new homes, they would have to help Gawad Kalinga’s volunteers build them and to abide by neighborhood covenants. (taken from the link above)

That's a slap in the face of the National Housing Authority, the agency tasked to do this. People and organizations are now being cited for doing the government's job.

Maybe it's time to farm out governmental functions to the private entities. This way, something good will come out of this contractualization craze.

1 Objection(s):

At 11:28 AM, Tropical Breeze said...: Please vote for the Gawad Kalinga video so that it will have a good chance to make it to the front page of the videos of digg.com site, which is ranked the top 100 most visited sites in the world wide Web. Pass it on to your friends and colleages, and CFC brothers and sisters. Click here to visit http://tinyurl.com/hz45f. To vote, you must " digg it ". It only has 3 votes. Imagine the exposure that Gawad Kalinga will have to the world!

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