RESTORING DIGNITY AMONG PEOPLE AND NATURE
By Jen Chan
TAKING ON THE CHALLENGE OF CLEANING THE Pasig River back in 2009 brought with it one of the biggest hurdles the ABS-CBN Foundation had to face in the line of public service – the task of relocating thousands of informal settlers along the river banks. The river was toxic, with families discarding domestic and human waste directly to the water for decades. Considered as a danger zone, no family should ever live there.
The best option for the foundation’s relocation efforts was Calauan, Laguna where 800 existing housing units of the National Housing Authority (NHA) may be rehabilitated. The units were renovated and with the help of public donations new houses were constructed by Habitat for Humanity which were able to accommodate the influx of relocatees as the rehabilitation of the river progressed. With an initial 10 families, the houses were occupied one after the other, with the ABS-CBN Foundation providing food and personal supplies to the families to help them settle in their new homes. The community came to be known as Bayani-Juan sa Southville 7 or BNJ. BNJ was formed to complement the efforts of Kapit Bisig Para sa Ilog Pasig (KBPIP). The two programs’ goal is to restore dignity among people and nature.
Ondoy caught everyone by surprise, and even BNJ was caught off guard when the need for NHA to relocate thousands of families from Marikina, Manila and Pasig to Calauan confronted it. BNJ was only prepared for relocatees from the esteros, but since the resettlement site is owned by the government, it had to open its doors to more than 3,000 new relocatees despite the limited resources.
Today, the community is thriving. A work in progress, BNJ is not spared from the challenges confronted by resettlement sites. However, efforts to provide the comforts of communal facilities continue. Electrification is ongoing as the Department of Energy provided P40 million to Meralco for electrification – for service posts, transformers and the like; a grant from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) on the other hand enabled the retrofitting of houses for electrification. Cur-
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