Community Building
SMART, together with the PLDT Foundation, supports Gawad Kalinga (GK) Foundation’s nationwide house-building program.
The PLDT Group has committed to help build seven GK villages in different parts of the country. SMART and PLDT employee volunteers help build the houses. Aside from this, livelihood opportunities for the beneficiaries are developed, as well as emergency communications systems.
Forging partnerships to help build the country
In 2004, PLDT and SMART became a corporate partner of the Gawad Kalinga (GK) Foundation, a non-government organization with a grand vision – to help eradicate homelessness in the Philippines by building 700,000 homes in 7,000 communities in seven (7) years or by 2010. The partnership is part of the PLDT Group’s thrust to give back to communities it serves.
PLDT and SMART’s initial donation went to the construction of 100 homes for the fire victims in Baseco Compound in Tondo, Manila, an urban poor community. While SMART employee volunteers were helping build homes in Baseco, successive typhoons ravaged the homes of a coastal community in General Nakar, Quezon. SMART adopted Barangay Banglos, the most affected community in Quezon, and pledged to build its second SMART Amazing GK Village for them.
Since then, PLDT and SMART have adopted a total of seven GK communities nationwide:
- Baseco Compound, Tondo, Manila, for urban poor fire victims
- General Nakar, Quezon province, for landslide and flood victims
- Camp Abubakar, Barira, Maguindanao province, for members of the Iranun tribe who lost their homes during the ‘all out war’ in 2000
- Talamban, Cebu City, Cebu, for informal settlers
- Arevalo, Iloilo City, Iloilo, for street children and their families
- Fort Magsaysay, Laur, Nueva Ecija, for families of soldiers of the Armed Forces of the Philippines
- St. Bernard, Southern Leyte, for the mudslide victims
Each village is designed to have 100 houses and a day care center. Various livelihood programs for the beneficiaries are also underway.
Sweat equity
The PLDT group’s support to GK’s efforts does not stop with financial donations for the building of the houses. Since 2004, more than 1,000 PLDT and SMART employees in Metro Manila, South Luzon, Iloilo, and Cebu have worked alongside beneficiaries – pouring cement, shoveling, digging foundations, putting up hollow blocks, painting – in the PLDT-SMART Amazing GK Villages in Baseco, General Nakar, Cebu and Iloilo.
Amazing GK Village - Towards Sustainability
