Cheryl Balliet’s family lives in a village in Leyte. She and husband Scott decided to raise funds to rebuild houses and communities in the area. Read about their campaign, also posted in their FB page.
By Cheryl & Scott Balliet
Recently, the island of Leyte (central Philippines) was devastated by a massive typhoon causing thousands of deaths and hundreds of thousands more to lose what little homes and possessions they had. I grew up on this island and my mum still lives there so I know firsthand the daily struggles they face. My husband and I are working on a mission to help rebuild these shattered villages and devastated lives. Unfortunately, we cannot do it alone because the devastation is on an epic scale. You may not always see it as a top news story but life is a day-to-day struggle there and we are asking for your help on behalf of those whose lives have been devastated.
Personally, I regularly support my mum who still lives there, but she is the very rare exception as there are countless others who have no ‘rich’ Australian families to support them like she has. Life is a day-to-day struggle for so many. They have nothing in the world, and the typhoon took not only their few possessions and shanties, but also their dignity and pride.
When the typhoon hit, my primary goal was to first raise urgent money to buy life-saving supplies like sacks of rice, clean water, tinned food, medicines and other simple essentials. As a result of some very quick and generous donations from my friends, workers, my husband’s school and others, we were able to raise over $4,200 in a matter of days.
With this money, we were able to organise my brother to rent a nine-ton truck, buy over 32 sacks of rice, about 1,000 cans of corned beef and other supplies. He delivered these a few days later directly to the villages around my mum’s house. By his estimation, there were over 500 families that he directly helped with the food. Everyone in my mum’s village had lost the roofs to their homes – so no shelter from the 300Km/hr winds and rain, no dry bedding, and everything they had was lost – including their hope. (For some reason, a portion of my mum’s roof miraculous stayed on only because a tree fell on it so she was able to somewhat seek shelter! Must have been a sign!)
Sacks of rice were and still are an essential starting point but the unfortunate reality is that they only last for so long. A donation of a sack of rice (which would cost about $50) would still be greatly, greatly appreciated and in fact, any amount certainly would be welcome as everything adds up. (Imagine how good you would feel if you looked back at your life and realised over time you donated one sack or 20 sacks of rice that directly helped feed starving villagers in the Philippines.)
Sacks of rice are great and if you could convince everyone you knew to do the same, the world would certainly be a better place because of the positive impact you helped create. Perhaps you could make it a yearly donation – just one sack of rice. It would certainly be at least one more sack that would have never got there in the first place.
But let’s say you wanted to do more. If so, please consider reading further to learn about our longer-term goal below.
After racking our brains for solutions and reading how other communities in the world break out of the poverty cycle, sustanability seems to be the real key and this can only be achieved by creating opportunities to help people help themselves through the creation of jobs and steady employment.
So here is our bigger, longer term goal – create sustainable communities, one community at a time. As an example, you may want to sponsor the construction of a Nipa Hut (about $800) or even donate enough money to build your very own community hut or small medical centre or even a school there! Money would be used to employ local workers and the money would help grow the community in ways that one bag of rice can’t. Give a person a fish and they eat for a day, teach a person to fish and they can can fish for a lifetime. Obviously such projects would also provide a safe dry home for a very deserving family or provide an area where children can learn and play with some sense of structure and safety.
To make this happen, our new goal is to reach $50,000 and then once that is reached we will double the goal again as we can no longer live our lives without doing what we can to bring social awareness to those in such dire need in these communities.
You don’t need to bleed your bank account dry, just give what you can – whatever you do, at least you are doing something tangible each year to make this word a better place. We are passionate about rebuilding these communities, and your donation will go a very long way towards this goal.
As for how to donate, we are in the process of setting up a Paypal link, but it takes a few days so alternatively you can send your donations directly to our fundraiser bank account which I can send via email if you would like to write to me at cheballiet@yahoo.com.au
Thanks again for your support and most importantly for your humanity as hopefully we can make a difference together. Visit
