Twenty years is a milestone we never thought we would reach but because of your immense generosity, we have come this far. Even the warmest, most sincere thank you is not enough to show how grateful we are to you for helping us turn 20. To commemorate this anniversary, we invited some of you to reminisce how we began, to witness what we have become, and to visualize what we want to achieve in the next 20 years.
The Christmas countdown is starting. It is getting closer. Your constant sharing of your love to our children and families make us feel every day is Christmas. We may have said it too many a times but we will never get tired of thanking you for that. In this edition, let us share to you bits of news on how Pag-asa has helped in many ways by putting in communion our TIME, KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS, AND TALENT, and how through all that, we can slowly eradicate poverty if we only change our approach to it.
Pag-asa participated in the recent 5 days Asian Congress of the Economy of Communion where we talked about reducing poverty and inequalities in the society. Everyone is also reminded that the EoC is created by Chiara Lubich (founder of the Focolare Movement) for the poor and for as long as we have not yet meet their needs, we have not succeeded yet in our goal that “all may be one”.
In October, there was the First anniversary of Pag-asa One Family Multi-Purpose Cooperative (POFMPC). During the celebration, we offered trainings needed in order to fully participate in the business of the cooperative and its affairs. As of now there are more than 100 active members of our cooperative.
After a year, we have finally finished the repair and rebuilding the houses of a hundred of our families who were adversely affected by super Typhoon Rammasun that hit Tagaytay in July 2014…With your kind and generous donations, we were also able to finally finished rebuilding the Favola building as well as the broken part of the Pag-asa attic. Thanks so much to all of you for your donations although we know that you had to sacrifice some things to give them to us. The economy drop has really affected us all and we are well aware of its cause: the failure of global capitalism to create fairness, equity and dignified livelihood for the poor.