Gawad Kalinga or "Gift of Care"

It is way beyond the proclamation of the Public Officials but the promise of the politicians campaigning for themselves or their party that is mostly centered on the poverty alleviation and low cost housing for the poor is still unclear.

Good thing GK or Gawad Kalinga or ‘gift of care’ in English is there to execute what they promised during their campaigns. Gawad Kalinga’s good deed started when in 1995 when as an initiative sought to rehabilitate the gang members and out-of-school youths residing in Barangay Siling, Caloocan City- the biggest squatters’ area in the Philippine at that time. They did it by holding a youth camp together with CFC (Couples for Christ).

Today thousands of people were the beneficiaries of the project. One example is in Leyte, in December 2003, GK turned over 70 houses to the landslide victims, to help them live a normal life again.

Gawad Kalinga Community Development Foundation is a Philippine based poverty alleviation and nation building movement dedicated to eradicating the poverty and restoring human dignity. Its vision is to bring the Philippines into First-World status by 2024, so called Vision 2024, which was launched in GK Global Summit in Boston, Massachusetts in June 2009.

Some of the achievements of the GK are as follows:

*GteK( Gawad Teknolohiya or gift of technology) – to provide IT training to high schools students and SIGA, the rehabilitation community for out-of –school youths.

*Bayan- Anihan (Harvest Nation) - a food-sufficiency program that inspires the poor toward self-sufficient food production.

*Lusog (Health in Filipino) – wherein medical practitioners contribute their time and effort through medical mission (free of charge), treat the poor and teach them about good health.

*They also started GK in Papua New Guinea, East Timor, Indonesia and Cambodia. Source: Enrich Magazine.


You can also visit their website at (www.gk1world.com) for more information. They are looking for volunteers to help execute their plans.