MAKING DREAMS REAL

A few miles outside of Naga City in the northeastern Philippines, down narrow one-lane roads and sprawling rice fields, lies a tiny, one-room building. This structure, hardly large or sanitary enough for one person to live comfortably, is home to eight: a father, mother, and six sons. Both parents work at manual jobs every day while their sons attend a public school. Despite their long hours, the family brings home less than the equivalent of US$3 a day. This pays for their daily food, which is always rice. All of the children are sickly thin, constantly on the verge of starvation.

The youngest boy, Christian, reached the point of starvation at six months of age. His parents dropped him off at a local orphanage, and he was immediately taken to the hospital. Christian is not the only child who lives at the orphanage despite having a family to go home to. In fact, nearly all of the children are there for the same reasons as Christian.

While the orphanage is the best alternative to living at home for many of its residents, it is not a suitable place for children to grow up healthy and well adjusted. The orphanage lacks the funding and caretakers to give Christian and the 32 other children what they require, either physically or emotionally. This leaves the orphanage relying heavily on volunteers to keep it running.

Lorenzo Rosales, a respected pediatrician and member of the Rotary Club of Naga East, Camarines Sur, volunteers at the orphanage. During one of his weekly club meetings, he met Rotary Youth Exchange students Josh Babcock, 19, and Lisl Stadler, 17, both from Washington, USA. After hearing that Stadler wanted to assume a more humanitarian focus during her time in the Philippines, Rosales took her and Babcock to the orphanage. The children they met and the conditions they saw left lasting impressions, driving them to volunteer often. With the orphanage so limited in staff, supplies, and care, Stadler and Babcock knew that the children could use their help, no matter how small the resulting change. They spent every spare moment they had with the children, doing anything that required doing, but they knew that the children needed more than what they alone could offer.

Since the end of their exchanges in May 2008, Stadler and Babcock have been able to collect some monetary contributions from people in the United States. The knowledge of the overwhelming need for help has driven them to set up a nonprofit organization to multiply their efforts and continue benefiting underprivileged children throughout the region.

The Bicol Change Education Foundation works to raise money not only to feed and clothe the children but also to send them to school, which will give them the education needed to expose them to greater opportunities. Funds also go toward the education of the staff running the orphanage in health, development, and child care. Stadler and Babcock hope Rotary clubs will support their efforts, pay attention to their cause and, if possible, take on the foundation as a project and assist in fundraising.