Every year, graduating Leadership Development Program (LDP) students in the Philippines go to work camp where they engage in community service. The yearly work camp usually engages students in missionary work to unreached tribal groups, but this year the students extended a helping hand to typhoon victims.

At the end of October, LDP students from all over the Philippines came together in Manila, Santa Mesa, Novaliches and Bulacan for the annual camp. They were tasked to perform community service for those who had been badly affected by Typhoon Ketsana, which dumped more than a month’s worth of rain in just 12 hours, fueling the worst flooding to hit the Philippines in more than 40 years.

Zechariah, one of the students, was excited to be at this year’s work camp putting the program’s value of Christian servant leadership into practice. As he walked into a community in Marikina City, he recognized the Marikina Bridge that he had seen on TV.

“This was where a family was swept away by strong flood currents and were riding the waves on the remains of floating debris. They passed beneath this bridge.”

Zechariah and his group of 12 others were assigned to clean a church building in the squatter community of Tumana, which was near the bridge. The church is a daughter church of the Marikina Foursquare Gospel Church, a Compassion church partner.

Registered children living in the area come to this church building for their weekly developmental activities. The registered children hadn’t been able to use the building for a month because of the mud and damage from the flooding.

The student workers were surprised that a month after the typhoon the church was still muddied all over up to its ceiling. “It’s as if the flood abated just yesterday,” they observed.

The entire community, too, was still full of traces of the flooding – mud-covered homes, turned-over vehicles, and people ceaselessly talking about how they survived.

Fetching a pail of water a few blocks from the church, Zechariah said, “This is nothing new to us. We are used to this kind of work.”

His teammates agreed, recalling the times when their own hometowns were hit by cyclones.

In the community of Novaliches, the group of LDP work campers was joined by volunteer youths, doctors and nurses to offer free medicine and medical checkups.

Together with volunteers from the Nazarene Student Center and the Novaliches Nazarene Church, they offered medical help to the families of both registered and non-registered children.

One of the volunteer nurses was Dahlia, a former LDP student, who brought along volunteer doctors with free medicine.

Tweela, another student worker, believes that through the work camp she can “project positive attitude against (the people’s) negative experiences.”

She said she has received so much from the Leadership Development Program that it is just right to give to others.

“It feels good to help people knowing that this was for a purpose. There was a sense of accomplishment as we saw the church slowly getting cleaner.”

Marikina City, where the students served, was one of the worst-hit cities in metro Manila. News reports placed the death toll in Marikina alone at 75 out of the total 240 deaths around the metro area.

“I was sure I was going to die that day,” said Pastor Lorenzo as he told the LDP students how he fought to swim to higher ground.

“Here in Marikina people are used to typhoons and floods, but I was shocked to see that the waters kept rising. I knew that this was bad.

“I had to escape when the water rose to my chest. It never stopped rising until it covered the entire church building. Many people from this community died.”

After the water abated the next day, the pastor attempted to clean and fix the place all by himself. Although his members offered help, he refused them because they, too, had to take care of their own lot.

After a few days, the pastor was so exhausted that doctors advised him to rest.

“But I couldn’t rest my mind because I kept thinking about our church. I believe that it was really God who sent you (LDP students) to help me do cleanup this week. Praise God for the LDP.”

My Account l Sponsor a Child l Help Babies and Moms l Crisis Updates

This has been a busy year. Our world is in turmoil and much of that turmoil is affecting Compassion’s work.

Here’s a snapshot of the things I’ve reported over the past 11 months:

military rebellion, slum fire, dengue fever outbreak, H1N1 virus outbreak, flooding, strike, civil conflict, volcanic eruption, earthquake, heavy rains, political unrest, hotel bombings, protests and violence, typhoons, meningitis outbreak, polio outbreak, cholera outbreak, famine, landslide, tribal war, ferry sinking, riots.

As an organization entirely dependent on your trust, we have made a commitment to be honest and transparent in everything we do. This means, among other things, that we do our best to let you know as soon as possible when your child is affected by a crisis or disaster.

In a perfect world, here’s how the process would work:

• Within 24 hours of a crisis, our Field Communications Specialist (FCS) submits a crisis report via e-mail. This e-mail comes to an inbox that I check regularly.
• As soon as I receive this e-mail, I determine whether funds will need to be raised to provide relief, and summarize the report and e-mail it to our partner countries (the countries where the sponsors live).
• Meanwhile, the FCS is in contact with the Partnership Facilitators (PF), field-based staff members who are contacting our affected church partners.
• The FCS then submits a follow-up report via e-mail, with further details from the PFs about which centers are affected, how they are affected, and any other relevant details, photos or video.
• As soon as the church partners are able to provide specific information on registered children, the FCS e-mails that information to me. I do a quality check and then forward that information to the partner countries.
• Each partner country then contacts all the sponsors with affected children to let them know the status of their child.

Seems pretty cut and dried, right? And often, the process works exactly as I just described it.

However, as we all know, we do not live in a perfect world. Sometimes a disaster will wreak havoc on the field’s end, thus affecting our communications process.

Let’s take the recent typhoons in the Philippines as an example.

Typhoon Ketsana hit the Philippines on Sept. 26. Almost 17 inches of rain fell in 12 hours, halting any semblance of normal life, flooding everything in sight, killing hundreds and displacing thousands more.

Roads were destroyed, electricity was out and much of the country was underwater, neck-deep in some places.

Eighteen of Compassion’s staff members in the Philippines office (more than half) were personally affected by the flooding (including the FCS responsible for sending the crisis report).

After the typhoons, every single staff person in the Philippines office was involved in the relief efforts and for a time, Compassion’s entire staff put their regular duties on hold in order to help those in desperate need.

During disasters like this, while you are anxious to hear news about your child, keep in mind that many unforeseen and unavoidable things can occur, hindering good communication. Grace, patience, understanding and flexibility are critical.

Here are some things that might affect the communication process after a crisis:

• Getting information from the field to the partner countries isn’t always the No. 1 priority.

  After a disaster, the highest priorities are critical needs such as shelter, clean water and food. Communication sometimes takes a back seat to meeting basic needs in life and death situations.

• It’s not just the sponsored children who are affected. Sometimes the staff members themselves are in need.

  While our staff members are trying to address the immediate needs of our registered children, they also must take care of their own families and homes.

• Communication tools are not available.

  The infrastructure in developing countries is much less stable than in the developed world. For instance, telephone and electricity were out throughout Manila, remaining out for weeks in some places. Communicating with the church partners was difficult, and in some cases, impossible.

• Different cultures put different importance on time.

  Many countries where we work are not time-oriented the way we are in the United States. Time requirements do not have the same importance as they do here.

Despite this, you can be confident in our commitment to share accurate information with you as quickly as possible after a crisis. It’s just that sometimes this may take longer than we’d like.

My Account l Sponsor a Child l Help Babies and Moms l Crisis Updates

Ketsana hit the Philippines on a Saturday, the day when registered children gather at the student centers. But on September 26 not many arrived at Marikina Foursquare Student Center. Ketsana was already pounding hard.

However, some children did come.

Bernadette, the center director, fed them and instructed them to go home immediately. And as she planned to visit the homes of other children to give them some food because the floodwaters were rising fast, she was called by her own family. Her home was flooded too.

“What I have learned from this is not to look back on the possessions I lost, but rather focus on saving myself and my loved ones. On that day, I couldn’t attend to the needs of the children since my own home was in disarray.”

In the following days Bernadette reports that none of the children from her student center were hurt, although all of their homes were flooded, damaged in some way or destroyed completely.

The student center and its surrounding communities were completely submerged under water. And five days after the typhoon, homes and communities were still flooded, muddied, stinky and a mess.

Mirasol, a mother at the church, says,

“It is still a nightmare for me. I still vividly recall images of people being swept away by the water. I couldn’t sleep thinking that I was not able to help them as they were crying, as they were swept away towards the river. My child was crying the loudest, ‘Mother, Mother, the water is so high already!’”

Two of Mirasol’s children, Maribel and Dominic, are registered at the student center. They are safe but their home is still under water.

Miguel, another child from the student center, says he was so afraid because he got separated from his father when his father took his mother to safety first, but could not come back for Miguel and his younger brother because of the dangerously strong current.

Miguel and his brother were rescued by a neighbor, also a Compassion parent, as the boys jumped from roof to roof. They were reunited with their parents the next day at the church, but their tiny home was washed away completely.

Miguel’s father confesses,

“I pounded on my heart in anguish, crying. I was thinking of my boys all the time. I didn’t know what to do. I tried to look for them several times. I even waded back and forth in the water calling out for my sons.”

But despite the situation he and his family now find themselves in, Miguel’s father says,

“I won’t complain because I still have what truly matters.”

His family.

When natural disasters strike, Compassion’s Disaster Relief Fund provides sponsored children and their families with food, clothing and basic supplies to help rebuild their lives. Learn more about the Disaster Relief Fund.

*Editor’s note: In the wake of a disaster we contact each sponsor who has a child affected by that disaster. We do so once we receive details from the country office about the child. If your child was affected by either Typhoon Ketsana or Typhoon Parma, you will be contacted when we receive information about your child.

My Account l Sponsor a Child l Help Babies and Moms l Crisis Updates

You know when you go on a mission trip that is a completely life-changing experience, and you come back all fired up? You just stared injustice in the face and realized you can actually do something about it. Your life takes on new purpose. It’s like the small seed of justice that had been lying dormant within you suddenly bloomed, and you feel an almost uncontrollable urge to share your experience with others in a way that will make them understand what has to be done.

You know that feeling?

That’s the type of passion-driven person the Compassion Philippines office hires. And they’ve come up with a pretty unique way to find those people.

The Compassion Philippines hiring process is unique. As part of the final round of interviewing, each candidate is required to participate in an “immersion experience,” a process designed to look into the heart of the candidate.

The immersion experience requires the candidate to spend four days and three nights living with the family of a Compassion-assisted child. The location selected is usually among the worst of the slum areas.

The candidate stays with the family, eats what they eat, sleeps in their home, and remains in their community for the entire time.

After the stay, the family and the church partner write a review of the experience and provide input on how the candidate related to them in their poverty. If a candidate does not pass this review by the family and church partner, he or she will not be offered a job at Compassion Philippines.

Country Director Noel Pabiona explains that the purpose of this final step is to identify candidates who truly have a heart for serving Compassion-assisted children and church partners.

“A candidate may look perfect on paper or in office interviews, but you can’t fake it in the field.”

Program Communications Manager Wendy Sebastian spent her immersion experience with a family of seven children in a small slum home. She worked with the mother breaking large pieces of charcoal into smaller pieces to sell.

Wendy shares how that experience impacted her: “Chopping and re-packing coal with Anna helped me see firsthand the difficulty and health risks she encounters every day to net 40 to 80 pesos a day ($1-2). I felt compelled to do something beyond enjoying and maintaining my privileged life. This experienced confirmed that God purposely led me to Compassion to help build His kingdom agenda and I had to obey His calling.”

Along with the hiring process, Compassion Philippines office staff who do not spend time in the field are required to participate in an immersion experience every two years to keep them in touch with the children and partners they are serving.

Wow! Now that’s on-the-job training if I ever saw it.

Working at my desk thousands of miles away from those in the field, sometimes I catch myself losing track of the reality of the ministry we’re doing. It’s easy to get swept up in the mundane routine of my daily tasks.

A radical interview experience like those in the Philippines would surely sear into the mind of any potential employee the serious and life-altering impact of his or her job.

As I was writing this, I was also working with the Compassion Philippines staff in the wake of Typhoon Ketsana. Along with thousands of our children who have lost homes, some of our staff have lost everything as well.

If you are interested in more information on this disaster, visit its crisis page. And please remember that we will contact you directly if your child has been affected by the disaster.

My Account l Sponsor a Child l Help Babies and Moms l Crisis Updates