Passages

Sticks and Stones That Changed A Community

Sticks & Stones That Changed a Community

by Ruby Ann Kagaoan - Calo

My volunteer work with the countryside poor continued as I raised my first baby. I was a fulltime homemaker when my family and I lived in a largely agricultural province at the outskirts of Metro Manila. Left alone with my baby while my husband worked in Metro Manila, I could hear from my home the children of the farmers fighting in the streets, their young mouths full of obscenities. The children were on their summer vacation and had the whole day to play, or rather, to argue with each other. I came to them one day and decided to teach them an old sticks and stones game that I used to play two decades earlier. They never knew this game, and so I got their attention.

From there, I engaged them in a contest. There was a vacant lot in our community where people pass through as a shortcut to town. That vacant lot had become dangerous as garbage, empty and broken bottles and opened empty cans were littered all over it through the years. No one did anything to clean up that vacant lot, which was centrally located in our community. I divided the children, 30 in all, into two groups. I said, “Ask your parents for empty rice sacks. We shall clean up that lot. The team that gathers the most litter wins. I shall give a volleyball to the winning team.” Within 10 minutes from the time the contest started, that vacant lot emerged clean, with the topsoil once more seen after years of being covered with litter. Then the community elected chairman came up to me to say that he would finally build the basketball court that had long been planned for that lot! Indeed, construction of the basketball court started right after our cleanup.

From playing wholesome games with the children, I decided to teach these 30 farmers’ children how to do business, with the construction workers as our target market. I gathered them in our family’s garage and used a little blackboard. Translating business terms such as working capital, sales, cost of goods sold, and profit margin to the familiar vernacular counterparts, I explained each business concept in a language that my young pupils, aged 7 to 14, could understand. Then I gave them seed money of one hundred twenty pesos (PhP120), which in a span of four weeks they grew to more than one thousand pesos (PhP1000) by selling cold and hot snacks to the construction workers. I taught them teamwork, service quality, division of labor, and how to save their retained earnings in a bank. At the end of the four weeks, just before the resumption of classes, the children split their savings and used their dividends to buy their school supplies.

Seven years later, I visited that rural community again, and the community chairman said that those children whom I taught never forgot the values and lessons that I taught them and that the older children have gone on to be successful professionals. What touched my heart further was that on that same lot – on which stood the basketball court, which became the venue of many inter-community tournaments over the years – a community health center and the community hall had also been built. That summer of 1993 with those 30 children forever changed a community, families, lives and futures, restored the environment, and empowered the poor and the youth!

I imagine that national development moves this way – starting from an individual, a family and a home that influence a community and that community in turn influences other communities, eventually touching a province. When a province shines, there is something that the rest of the nation can emulate. The hope of a nation, therefore, can begin with you and me. You and I may be as bare and simple as sticks and stones are, but we can make a difference, just like those sticks and stones that changed Dasmaville in Dasmariñas, Cavite. When you visit that bustling community, remember this story.

posted by Ruby Ann Kagaoan - Calo @ 3:11 AM