Tourists and Home Building — Great Combination
Gawad Kalinga communities to be ‘tourist-ready villages’
By Tessa Salazar
Inquirer
Last updated 00:02am (Mla time) 09/23/2006WITH THE first grand event of Gawad Kalinga communities to happen from October 6 to 8 at the Mall of Asia, the emerging challenge for township and property developments using the GK format is how to make GK shelters tourist-ready villages as well.
Tourists-for-a-cause and youth groups from 34 countries dropped by the GK villages recently to learn for themselves how and why the villages “clicked†and to assess if these same villages could suit them in their future visits to the country.
GK volunteers present during the visit said, however, that they were not looking to build resort-type communities but visitor-friendly structures that could be upgraded to accommodate tourists who would like to stay for some time. Full entry here:
OK first thing many readers are going to ask is, what the heck is Gawad Kalinga? Short answer is it’s a free-standing charity (NGO or Non-Government Organization) that coordinates people who want to help the poor by building houses with people in need of houses. If you think that sounds a bit like Habitat For Humanity, you’re correct, but it’s not the same organization. HFH is very much alive and well on it’s own in the Philippines and the two organizations work to the same goals.
In my 7 years of intimate acquaintance with the Philippines I have run into many foreigners who want to help cure the abysmal housing conditions of the poor. The schemes run form grandiose ideas like let’s re-make the entire government to sending cash in the hopes it will get where it will do some good.
No scheme I can think of is better than building houses for people. It has concrete, immediate satisfaction, there’s no nagging thoughts of where did the money go, and like the parable about teaching the man to fish and feeding him for a lifetime, when you build a man a house you house him and his children for their lifetimes and the lifetimes of children to come. Kind of a monument that serves a purpose for a change.
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