Moving On

7-7

This week (Thursday through Wednesday) I am in Montalban in the province of Rizal, east of Manila. It seems yet again more rural than the previous communities. The town, not so much, but the areas where FH is working (Curayo, Tibag) just seem like collections of shanties surrounded by fields. As far as I can gather, this seems to be “slum sprawl”, people just running out of room so they’re creating their own lots in what used to be just forest.

My job here is also more of a challenge. I’m supposed to be writing about the successes of FH, but FH has only been here a year. FH is built for creating long-term, sustainable change, and rightly so in my opinion. It just means that there’s not necessarily a lot of fruit after only a year. Sure, good things are happening; kids are going to school, getting school supplies and medications, families are going to Bible studies, etc. It’s just not nearly as conducive to writing about as say a sponsored child about to graduate college, or a CDP mother who got a job at a health center with FH training.

As always though, my job description is as fuzzy as ever. I get the sense that the office is just happy for me to get a better understanding of what a new center looks like and write nothing for the week. Which is fine, it just makes it trickier for me to figure out how I’m supposed to be spending my time.