December 8, 2005

The children of Payatas need your help*

Hello :)

I've never felt the need to spam your inboxes but I believe this is for a good cause.

I am writing to ask for your help.

Recently, I received a letter from Lorenzo Veneracion, a retired judge who has spent the past fifteen years helping the children of Payatas in Quezon City. Aside from assisting them with their education and teaching their families to become more productive, they also put up soup kitchens and have been feeding 1000 children a meal of rice and vegetables every day. They have two centers in Quezon City - the Soup Kitchen and the Lighthouse Center for Children. This NGO (Foundation For Soup Kitchen, Food Bank and Training, Center Inc. and Lighthouse Center for Children Foundation, Inc.) is licensed by the DSWD and is accredited by the Quezon City Government.

They have been reliant on donations from Rustan's Supermarkets - Rustan's has been providing second harvest vegetables, beef bones and baked products. Rice is also donated.

Mr. Veneracion said that he and the other people from his NGO have been trying to get partners and sponsors but they've been unsuccessful so far. They have written to different politicians too but have been ignored.

My newspaper section wants to help the children of Payatas too. We will be releasing a story on the soup kitchens on December 21 in the desire to encourage young readers to do what they can to help these children too. We will be visiting them next week. Before our visit, we would like to collect donations that we could bring with us when we go there.

Several companies have expressed interest in becoming sponsors but I thought you might want to help too.

Believe it or not, the cost of feeding one child per day is only P2.75.

Your donation of P27.50 will be enough to feed 10 children.

Your donation of P275 will be enough to feed 100 children.

Any amount will definitely be appreciated.

Donations in kind will also be a big help. Here's an excerpt from an e-mail sent by Mr. Veneracion.

"We are open to donations in kind, like rice - if you can solicit rice, and also mongo beans, dried dilis, dried alamang, soy sauce, brown sugar, vegetable oil, sayote, potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots and all kinds of veggies in season, fruits like pineapple, or powdered milk, food flavorings like ginisa mix, chicken cubes, meat cubes and others."

If you'd like to help in any way, please e-mail me at pajammy at gmail dot com or ppastor at inquirer dot com dot ph.

Please feel free to forward this e-mail to other people you think might like to help.

Thanks so much.

Hoping for your favorable response :)

Sincerely,
Pam Pastor

*I sent this message to people I know, I posted it on Friendster and now I'm posting it on this blog. Tomorrow I'm planning to send out SMS. There's no better time for good deeds than now.