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- What
are the criteria for choosing the GK locations?
- How do you choose the beneficiaries and how much do they pay
for their home?
- Why is
the Kapitbahayan Neighborhood Association important?
- Who owns
the land?
- Who owns the house?
- Why paint homes with bright colors and landscaped gardens?
- What is the relationship between Gawad Kalinga and ANCOP?
- How
do we know that our donations reach the intended recipients?
What kind of feedback will we get, how often, and in what form?
- How
much of my donation reaches the site?
- What about livelihood?
- Isn't the GK project really government's job?
- Why help the poor in the Philippines and other developing countries
when there are poor right here in the America?
1.
What are the criteria for
choosing the GK locations?
The
residents must be poorest of the poor. Next, there must be a strong
volunteer caretaker team that is willing to look after the site for 2 to
5 years until the community is self-reliant. Then, we must be able to
resolve any land ownership issues. Finally, we must be able to build
homes in a cluster. This is because if we build houses 1 by 1, there is
no impact on the community and the influence of the surrounding slum is
too powerful to bring about lasting change. If we are building in a
slum, we need to build a minimum of 30 to 50 homes. When we build a GK
community, we start with at least 30 homes in a cluster to become the
model community and start the change. This small community causes a
ripple effect and the impact of the work goes beyond the physical
boundaries of the homes.
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2. How do you choose the beneficiaries and how much do they pay for
their home?
They must be
poorest of the poor. GK carefully profiles all families to establish
this based on income, sources of livelihood, family size, etc. Next,
they must be willing to give ‘sweat equity’ or bayanihan, since GK is
not a dole out. This means that we ask the poor to pay the value of
their home in labor – for each day they work, a Peso value is deducted
from the value of the home. Labor is not limited to areas of
construction or site development. Mothers can be involved in the other
programs, and their services are also given a corresponding value that
is deducted from the total value of their home. They do not only build
their own house but also their neighbors’ houses, the path walks,
school, etc. This heals a lot of relationships in the slums because how
can you fight with your neighbor when he built your house?
This sweat equity payback also helps build a new culture of sharing and
service within the community. In many of the more mature GK communities,
residents continue to provide labor and service in construction and GK
programs even after they have fully paid for the value of their home.
Finally, the residents must be willing to become active members of the
Kapitbahayan Neighborhood Association, which we form in each site.
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3. Why is the Kapitbahayan
Neighborhood Association important?
The Kapitbahayan is the key to ultimate self-reliance of the GK site.
All residents join and elect their own president. In a concrete
demonstration of servant leadership, the president they elect is the
last one to get his house! To complement the meager resources of local
government in many of our GK communities, the Kapitbahayan must learn to
become responsible for cleanliness, peace and order, conflict
resolution, community mobilization for building, etc. Over time,
responsibility for running these elements of the community is
transferred from the GK caretaker team to the Kapitbahayan and the poor
learn true community building and self-reliance.
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4. Who owns the land?
Land ownership
in GK sites depends on how the land is acquired for the GK community.
Donation from a Private Individual/ Group
GK usually encourages private donors to donate their property to the
Local Government Unit (LGU) and not to Gawad Kalinga for the following
reasons :
a. GK often does not have the resources and capability to do land
development and government funds for these purposes can only be used for
governmentland.
b. If the property is owned by the LGU, GK and the residents are exempt
from paying real estate taxes because the land remains the property of
the LGU.
c. Once a donor donates the property to the LGU, GK and the residents
immediately enter into a usufruct agreement (normally 25-50 years
renewable) that allows the residents free use of the land for GK
purposes since they normally do not have the capacity to amortize for it
yet.
Government Relocation Sites
a. Government provides land for free that they already own/purchased or
donated and use it as a relocation site. This is usually under a
usufruct agreement with GK and/or the Kapitbahayan Association, not with
individual families.
b. Government program where they make reasonable monthly payments,
usually with a maximum of 25 years (depending on age of beneficiaries).
This can be under the Community Mortgage Program (CMP), National Housing
Authority (NHA) or a local housing initiative. Once the families
complete their payment, they will have individual land titles to their
property.
Private Sale
a. In very rare occasions, Gawad Kalinga is requested by a group of
former squatters that have previously entered into a sale agreement with
the landowner. In this case, GK helps build their homes and community,
and they pay directly to the landowner for the land. This can either be
individually titled or owned communally by the Association.
GK never builds on land where people are squatting. Instead, we
negotiate with the landowner to donate the land or sell it at a reduced
cost. If the owner refuses, we look for other land to relocate the
residents to. GK’s legal arm makes sure that the land titles are clean
and free from claims and encumbrances, before homes are built.
Also, Kapitbahayan members sign an agreement with Gawad Kalinga stating
that they will not sell or rent out their homes to others. Should they
fail to comply, it also states that they grant Gawad Kalinga the right
to choose who should become the next homeowner/occupant.
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5. Who owns the house?
The land and house go together. See response to #4.
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6. Why paint homes with
bright colors and landscaped gardens?
In GK, we want to teach first world standards of
excellence even to the poorest of the poor, so the
whole country can rise out of the third world.
Painting our homes in ‘colors of hope’ has a deep
psychological impact on the poor since every morning
when they wake they see that their lives have
changed. Restoring dignity and hope, as well as
introducing a culture of excellence are the most
important steps towards making the poor unpoor.
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7. What is the relationship
between Gawad Kalinga and ANCOP?
Gawad Kalinga (GK) is the name of our community
development work in
Gawad Kalinga
(or GK) is the name of our community development work in the Philippines
and in other third world countries. ANCOP is GK's international partner.
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8. How do we know that our
donations reach the intended recipients? What kind of feedback will we
get, how often, and in what form?
GK is independently audited in the Philippines and
ANCOP is also independently audited in the United States. We provide
quarterly village updates through our website, www.ancopusa.org. ANCOP
GK Village Builders and partners who donate a house have access to a
description of and community development plan for your village, as well
as a profile of the family and thank you letter once the homes have been
completed. We encourage our partners to visit their adopted community if
they are going to the Philippines. We do not want our partners to feel
simply the pain of parting with their money, we want them to feel the
joy of giving and seeing the transformation (so that they can be touched
and transformed too!).
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9. How much of my donation
reaches the site?
When you donate to most organizations, they have
to remove their overheads, marketing expenses, etc and so often a much
smaller amount is spent on the project than what you donated. In GK
ANCOP USA, our overheads are 6%.
However, when you become a GK Partner,
the value of what is done on the site is MORE than the amount you give!
This is because your donation is used to buy building materials but we
also add to that free labor, free architects and engineers, free site
development (usually shouldered by local governments or other partners
as counterpart) plus land which is reduced or even donated too. This
means that the donation actually results in a home with a value more
than three times that amount being given to the poor! That is the only
way we are able to build homes for such a small amount.
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10. What about livelihood?
Livelihood will never be as straightforward as
building homes and will always be a longer process. However, we
recognize that it is needed for this work to be sustainable and we
believe we have a comprehensive plan for doing it, borne out by many
successes already.
• We improve the motivation of the poor through values formation. Often
the poor have skills but they just work for a few days then indulge in
vices until they run out of money again. When you have no hope for your
future and no self respect, it is difficult to be self-motivated. We
restore that hope and dignity and the productivity of the people
naturally increases as a result.
• Food sufficiency. We aim to bring food sufficiency or at least food
augmentation to every GK site through GK Bayan-Anihan.
• In urbanized areas, we focus on manpower pooling and developing
cottage industries per village.
Read about GK Robin Hood
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11. Isn’t the GK project
really government’s job?
YES and NO. Yes, government should do their job
and do it better, but they cannot solve the problem of poverty alone,
especially in a poor country like the Philippines which does not have
funds to provide even basic services. Many of them are actually trying
to do better by becoming GK partners and adopting our principles of
development.
We want to be part of the solution, not the problem. GK acts as a
catalyst to spur various sectors of society to wake up and do/give their
share. It is not only government’s job to uplift the lives of the poor
because nation building involves everyone in the nation.
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12. Why help the poor in
the Philippines and other developing countries when there are poor right
here in the America?
The ‘poor’ in
the first world are very different from the poor in the developing
world. Poor in the first world have access to social services, welfare
payments, etc provided by government, which the poor in developing
countries do not. Also, a donation to a country like the Philippines
will go much further than the same amount of money could help someone in
the first world.
A donation that may alleviate suffering for only a few months in the
west can change a family forever in the third world. We are not saying
ignore the poor in your home country, quite the opposite. We strongly
support helping the poor in every country. You should be able to do
something at home and donate to rebuild countries abroad too, especially
the country that you came from.
In the Philippines, Gawad Kalinga has already built a credible name and
a massive network of volunteers and residents, all coming together for
nation building. When you give to ANCOP, you contribute to not just
making the Philippines better, but you invest in a showcase that can
eventually be replicated.
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