Well it’s a compelling question, isn’t it?! I have been asked this question ever since I started feeding severely malnourished babies in Mindanao back to health (2010). Please notice that that has a VERY defined goal embedded in it, maybe because I am a child of the 60s and after the Vietnam war we realized that any armed action should have clearly defined and obtainable goals, and after all, charity work IS a type of armed action, it’s just that we are armed with food and education and books instead of napalm and bullets.

I strongly believe that any type of help to any person anytime (including you and I) is simply a sharing of hope and that is by itself a very powerful message. I see “learned helplessness” in the eyes of the children and their mothers every day. They know that their life sucks even at such young ages (pre-school) and they are starting to think it will always suck. None of them ever look at us and think, “Oh boy, free food today, I’ll worry about tomorrow when it gets here.” By the end of the 13-week program they are not only back to health (our stated goal) but they also have a smile back in their eyes that says to me “Maybe my life will not always suck so bad.” Hope.

David Wasson of the Tagum City Food Bank, Mindanao
David Wasson of the Tagum City Food Bank, Mindanao
There are always collateral benefits to any charity program that are not so readily noticeable. We let the kids check out a book every week from our little library. We give the mothers classes on things like budgeting, breastfeeding, nutrition, growing vegetables. We give them vegetable starts so the kids can grow their own food and share it with the family. We give the 3 kilos of rice every week after lunch directly to the kids; they know that is their rice, not mom’s or uncle Bobong’s. We give them shoes and vitamins. Those are all the noticeable things. But we have also given 30 other mothers in the same situation (empowerment as women) as we introduced to them the programs and people in their barangay that can help them—and they meet an array of people dedicated to helping them, and that gives them hope. You have to be looking to see hope in a child’s eyes.

There is a lot to be said for charity work, but watch out for feel good projects. I mean it feels good to do a mass feeding but it doesn’t really help much beyond a one-time hot meal (usually lugaw and not nutritionally balanced). Again I want a clearly defined attainable goal. I have restored 700 severely malnourished pre-school children to health. All 700 will do better in school, be taller, and have less trouble with health, the law and many other correlated results of being malnourished as a baby. This made a measurable difference and helped them toward an education and a road out of the crushing poverty they live in.

One last question—the idea that parents don’t care about their children. If what you see is abandoned kids on the streets, living in garbage cans, (the abuse they endure is really unimaginable), it would be easy to come to the conclusion that they don’t care. But I will never believe it. ALL parents—drug addicts, criminals, alcoholics—wish they could take care of their children even if they can’t. There is a difference between being lost and having no idea how to love your kids and not wanting to. Even if their own capacity to deal with life is destroyed, the child still has a chance. We can’t really know what the back story of each child is, or the parents whose own stories are likely just as bad as the child’s. We take them one case at a time and do whatever we can from our own perspectives and pray for a lasting change.

(Ime’s note: If you would like to know more about Tagum City Food Bank, or to help Chef David with his programs, please visit http://tagumfoodbank.org for more information.)