Our life is full of cycles.
Let me paint you a picture.
Our grandparents worked then sent their children, our parents to school in order to have a good life. Our parents grew up, got a job, worked then sent their children, us, to school in order to provide us with good lives too. We grew up, got a job, worked, and now a lot of you are sending your kids to school in order for them to have good lives as well. After all, you all want nothing but the only the best for you children, right? In a nutshell, this is a generational cycle from a bigger picture.
How about this?
Let me introduce you to Juan. His grandparents never received any education because of poverty so they ended up scavenging barely making ends meet. In fact, for the most part, they barely even make enough or anything at all to put food on the table and ease their burning stomachs. They live in a shanty. No electricity, not even access to potable water. Every waking day for them is another day not to live, but merely to survive.
Juan's parents, at a very early age, were forced to work in order to help their parents increase their chances of surviving each day, thus making it impossible to insert the idea of education in the picture. How can they? They barely even make enough to feed themselves!
Juan's parents are both illiterate and we all know that even high school graduates find it extremely difficult to make a decent living. Can we just imagine how it must be for illiterate people like Juan's mother and father?
No read. No write. Juan's parents knew nothing else to do but to scavenge for a living too and so Juan, with his family barely making ends meet too, and barely even make enough or anything at all to put food on the table and ease their burning stomachs as well, was forced to help his parents out, and work at a very early age to survive. Unless he forces himself out of the situation and decides to do something about it, he will end up like his grandparents and parents, and his children, and the children of his children will live the same kind life his previous generations have lived.
This is the cycle of poverty.
It is vicious and could potentially be never-ending unless outside intervention takes place. People who are born into poverty are like hamsters running in a hamster wheel. They get tired but they don't get anywhere and there is no foreseeable way out. Their life is a like a bad movie and they wake up each day to relive the same heartbreaking story.
A lot of us are blessed with advantages such as money, education, shelter, and way more that our basic needs, but over 25% of Filipinos are like Juan who were born into poverty and were given no choice.
Believe it or not, my family went through the same vicious cycle. Determined to get out of the rut, my mother pushed her luck and braved a foreign land just to provide us with good education and just so we don't get to experience what she and my grandparents did. So here I am, blessed to be employed by the country's top investment bank as an investment banker, living a good life – nothing extravagant, just good quality life, and better prepared and capable of giving my children the same good future too. Beginning from me, I wish to continue the same generational cycle which most of you have been accustomed to and I am wishing the same for a lot of the Filipino people like Juan.
I believe the lack of education is the ultimate cause of poverty. Hence, I would like to enjoin everyone to try to take a hard look at this problem and see how we can help in providing all the Juans of the society the fighting chance in getting out of the poverty cycle, and change the course of their lives and their future generations all together. This is my advocacy.
Sometimes, people just need to be given a break, to be given a chance, that one opportunity to be able to live a dignified life, and I believe God has guided me to get to exactly where I am now and to be exactly who I am now to be able to do so. I believe God made me go through everything I went through in life in order to make me appreciate the destination he had for me while at the same time understand the struggles of living a difficult and poor life.
I was blessed to have a mother who sacrificed turning into a stranger in my eyes just so I could have a shot in life. I was able to study, acquire knowledge and intelligence, and eventually was able to land a job in one of the country's premier investment banks.
Now bearing the advantage of having the intelligence, skills, and financial capacity, I aim to create job opportunities for the less fortunate ones. I am rolling-out a unique format of retail stores and we will be employing those unemployable people. We will be providing them with the necessary training in order to do their functions well and make a living out of it. While I aim to provide scholarships to deserving less fortunate children, I believe the feasibility of getting through school starts with having enough food on the table and a decent shelter, which is why I believe creating job opportunities for unemployable people is just as important. By providing them such means, they will have the capacity to send their children to school and this will give not just them but even down to their children and the children of their children,the same shot I had in having a good life.
The cycle of poverty is a never-ending cycle unless an intervention takes place. I want to be that intervention the same way my mother was in our own cycle. Her one act of sacrifice goes beyond me. It goes down to our future generations and it goes out to other people in need beyond our blood. This is a perfect example of one simple act creating a rippling effect and a positive impact even beyond what we can imagine.
So the next time we see children on the streets begging for food, little girls selling their bodies to earn a living, and toddlers going though garbage bins for food, I hope we never look at them the same way again. I hope we see them as victims of circumstances and the poverty of cycle they were born into. I hope we grant them that break, that opportunity to get out of the life they never chose to have in the first place. I hope, even in our small little ways, we become this world's much needed intervention.
True, Ishi. Those who have received more have a moral obligation to help those, with little, or no breaks, in life. But those on the receiving end have the responsibility to stand up (or at least try), and not resign themselves to their fate. I let my kids watch that video shared last Saturday by Bryan and Jen. Their reactions:
ReplyDeleteRei (6 yrs old): I feel sad, because they don't have clean food. But they're so many! That's why it's hard for them to buy food.
Aeon (8 yrs old): Their father should have studied hard to get a good job or started a good business.
OMG, my kids are parroting my own values! =D