Help Me Help You to Help Someone Else in the Philippines!

Posted: January 30th, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: altruism, travel | No Comments »

I’m pretty damn excited right now. I just cashed in my air miles and booked a flight to Cagayan de Oro, Philippines to do some disaster response volunteering. It’s been nearly two months since the typhoon flooding hit Mindanao, so here’s a short BBC clip for memory refreshing.

The catch here, and where you become involved, is that I can’t actually afford to go do this. What I’d like to do is offer my services to you in order to help me raise the money I need. Here’s the scenario and what I hope I can offer.

The Problem: I am planning to be volunteering in the Philippines for 3 weeks in March (3/2 – 3/20) with All Hands Volunteers (the same group I went to Haiti with!). A really short time unfortunately. The catch is that I’m also coincidentally unemployed as of the end of February. So I have no income with which to fund this. Granted, this should mean I don’t go. I figure though that I now have the spare time. And air miles covers the vast majority of the expense. Plus, it’s not like the thousands of people made homeless by the flooding are terribly convenienced by it all either. If I can cover the remaining expenses, then get some work as soon as I get home, I can pull this off. I’m totally up for the challenge if you are. By my math, I need about $600 to bridge the gap. This is for airline tariffs, taxes, medical insurance fees, and ferry tickets. All the unavoidable junk.

My Offer: While in the Philippines, I am offering to meet any request you have. Maybe you want to know something about the area, people, local food, etc? Maybe you just want a postcard? Or a picture of a cat? A poem about rice? I don’t care what it is really. I don’t like just asking for money for free, so I prefer to offer something in exchange. Whatever you think is a fair exchange for your donation. While I’m there I’ll also be working my ass off clearing mud out of houses, demolishing ruined houses and hopefully constructing some new ones.

You! Can simply chip in to make this thing work out and make a request. Most people seem to prefer PayPal, but if you don’t then just email me and we’ll figure something out. Any amount you want to give is fantastic! I’ll post lots of pics and info here of course. Plus any requests I get will be posted here. Any questions? Just ask! Please make sure to give me your email address with your request so I can let you know when it’s posted or ask follow up questions. Donate some money via PayPal here!

Thank you all very much! This idea of asking other people to help me go help some other people feels a bit awkward to me. I’m pretty excited to make it work though. Thanks!

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// Shawn