In the Philippines, scores of people leave the provinces hoping to find better opportunities in the city, only to end up in slums where poverty is so deep that it often become a breeding ground for criminal activities and the spread of diseases.
Local grassroots organization Gawad Kalinga tries to fight this and restore human dignity — make these people “human again” — by providing them with land and decent homes featuring the basic necessities, but with a catch: all of them must be built by the community members, including the men.
"In development there's a bias against men. Microfinance and micro-enterprises are about women. But criminals and rebels are men. So we realized they should be part of the solution," Tony Meloto, GK founder and chairman, told Devex Editor Rolf Rosenkranz at the first Devex Partnerships Forum in Manila.
GK also has many projects outside of the main cities and even in other countries like Indonesia. Now its most recent initiative is for survivors of natural disasters to help build 30,000 homes for the victims of Typhoon Haiyan, which struck the Philippines in November 2013.
Click on the above clips to learn more about Meloto's vision of development, how he thinks the aid community can address the problem of urban congestion, and what the organization is currently working on to harness the skills of people both from the urban and rural settings in the Philippines.
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About the author
Jenny Lei Ravelo@JennyLeiRavelo
Jenny Lei Ravelo is a Devex Senior Reporter based in Manila. She covers global health, with a particular focus on the World Health Organization, and other development and humanitarian aid trends in Asia Pacific. Prior to Devex, she wrote for ABS-CBN, one of the largest broadcasting networks in the Philippines, and was a copy editor for various international scientific journals. She received her journalism degree from the University of Santo Tomas.