It's time to HELP

For a Better Life

By: Gary Valenciano

I bet only few of you knows this song, it is really not commercialized. This song is the official soundtrack for MDG #1. Wait! Whaaaat? Hmmmm... okay. let me just explain what MDG is.

MDG stands for Millenium Development Goals, these are eight (8) international goals established by all the members of the United Nations (UN) in 2000. Each goal has specific targets and all these should be met by 2015. The goals are as follows:

To eradicate extreme poverty and hunger

To achieve universal primary education

To promote gender equality and empowering women

To reduce child mortality rates

To improve maternal health

To combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases

To ensure environmental sustainability

 

Now that we know what MDG is let us now continue with my blog...

In our (with my classmates) Development Communication course we are tasked to make a video about the 8 MDGs, and my group was assigned to MDG #1 with the official soundtrack by Mr.Pure Energy himself. Ooooh! I remembered his concert at our school! OMG! He's such a great performer! Going back to the topic, this project is really an eye-opener for us that the Philippines really has a huge problem in terms of poverty. There are many slum areas, I bet that there is no baranggay without the slums, there are also many beggars on the street and on Jeepneys. What we did in order to hit two birds with one stone, we were able to pass the required video and at the same time we are glad we helped those people we referred earlier as the "poor". As we shoot, we gave them sandwiches in return. It was a very small amount of help but the smiles they gave back were un-explainable :)   And we also interviewed a family consisting of the parents with 12 children, and they also have their grandchildren, it was pretty huge, and more of a extended family type. After our interview with the parents we shared meals with them, rice and sardines. We also gave them groceries, just a token for their warm welcome, and hospitality.  It was really a once in a lifetime event. It was very hard most especially the heat of the sun which made our pores very open (sweaty... eeeew! :c). We actually got tanned after doing this video shoot. Another experience is when we, together with Jaja Guinto and Carl Velasco, were very nervous as we wander around the "lake" riding a small boat with 3 DSLRs! Imagine that huh? while on the boat I am praying "please don't let us fall, please don't let us fall." It was also my first time to ride that kind of boat, and it was amazing! :) 

I hope we could still do it, one more time! kudos my friends! :) We did a very good job! 

I caught a fish yey!