The Philippine Online Chronicles

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Antonio Meloto 's Builder of Dreams is far from being a simple company history. Although it talks about how Gawad Kalinga came to be, it is partly memoir and a plea for social change. For the founder of one of the most visible and successful social transformation projects in the Philippines, its development is intertwined with his own personal evolution.

The book follows Antonio Meloto as he comes face to face with the harsh realities of Philippine poverty and develops the vision that would attract the attention not just of the poor, but the middle-class and the wealthy - that change is possible, and that it can be achieved by people who care.

Where the heart leads

"A deep sense of loss that I could hardly articulate started me on this journey," Meloto begins. At the age of 46, he had everything a person might need to be satisfied - he had a job, a home, and a family. He was also a respected member of Couples for Christ.

It was a deeply religious experience, one Meloto describes as akin to being "struck by lightning" during a prayer session in October 1995, that drew him away from the comfortable life he was living.

"I...had no choice but to follow where the voice in my heart was telling me to go," he writes. "At the age of forty-six, I was responding to a calling to put my faith where it really mattered."

The ‘call' brought Meloto into the slums of Bagong Silang, then "the most dangerous slum in the Philippines," during a weekend formation session in December 1995. Here the seeds of what would later be called Gawad Kalinga were planted.

In Bagong Silang, Meloto found himself in an entirely different world. The area was populated by people in the lowest dregs of poverty, including drug addicts, criminals and gang members. These were the people whom the upper class locked their gates against, he realized. These were the people one avoided making eye contact with in the streets, or from whom people protected their bags and pockets against.

It was easy for Meloto to question his own judgment in going there.

"Perhaps this was also my way of wrestling with the onset of midlife and issues of accountability and legacy at the end-game that game with it ," he writes. "I went to the community of the poor...because I was in search of answers...I had no blueprint, no grand plans, only the intuition to do what was right..."

Forgotten treasures

The first seven chapters of the book detail Meloto's experiences at Bagong Silang. While he extensively discusses his early projects targeting livelihood and spiritual formation among the slum-dwellers, what really illumines his narration are the characters he met there.

Among them was a gang leader who was out for revenge for his father's murder, a teenage girl who was abandoned by her parents and prostituted herself in a cemetery, and a petty thief who planned on holding up a bus to obtain money for his mother's medication. Meloto mentions each of them by name, tracing their bleak and often tragic histories.

While the rest of society might have deemed them degenerates or hopeless cases - people so far entrenched in the harshness of their environment that there was no more helping them, Meloto saw them as "a mother lode of treasures."

It was among these people, caught inextricably in a web of violence and indignity, that Meloto found himself experiencing "Abraham moments" where he found himself being called to act as a father to them.

Meloto relates how as the years went by, he saw subtle but positive changes in those very people the rest of society had given up on. Despite relapses, the gang leader went on to vocational school and ceased operating a gang. The teenage girl became a regular in community activities. The petty thief did not continue with his plan of robbing a bus and took a loan from Meloto instead.

Meloto's interactions with the people of Bagong Silang provided him with directionality, which was significant as his goal of helping the poor was taking him into a territory for which he had no map.

"There was no shortcut for me," he writes. "I had to learn everything the hard way because no one in the country at that point could show me that there was a better way.'

Through his experiences, he formulated the tenets that would be the foundation for Gawad Kalinga.

"Build" philosophy

Today, Gawad Kalinga employs a "Build" philosophy, most pointedly manifested in their main objective of building houses for the poor. The "Build" philosophy is Gawad Kalinga's response to the destructive cycle Meloto witnessed in the people of Bagong Silang. It focuses on creating not just new houses, but new opportunities and new beginnings for the poor.

Essential to this, the organization believes that more than dole-outs of money or food or livelihood programs, what the people from areas like Bagong Silang need are to be approached with friendship. This shows a regard for them as human beings despite their being caught in inhumane conditions.

"Caring is not about a project, which oftentimes is not sustainable, or a program, which is incomplete," Meloto writes. "It is about people and relationships."

To "build" also means creating connections with those who have more resources. Gawad Kalinga does not antagonize the wealthy despite the traditional mode of attacking the rich in order to uplift the poor.

It would not do to alienate those who have the resources and power, Meloto says. On the contrary, it is imperative to involve the rich in order for changes to be made.

Gawad Kalinga is now one of the most financially supported housing projects in the country, with sponsors, numbering not only individuals but also large corporations and government institution.

"I guess people, rich or poor, are willing to invest in hope, whatever is around," says Meloto.

He ascribes the attraction of Gawad Kalinga for the rich to its vision - that positive change can be built out of almost nothing, and that despite overwhelming odds, wide and sweeping changes in the country's social landscape are possible.

"On hindsight, we intuitively made GK village a rainbow of colors not only to project hope but also to attract attention to the fact that change was possible," he writes. "Government leaders took notice when brightly colored homes with landscaped gardens sprouted in once-ugly slums and attracted media attention and massive radical volunteerism."

The GK phenomenon

The overwhelming response to what began as a feeling of emptiness in Meloto and a small community program at Bagong Silang is no more evident than in the many testimonials in Builder of Dreams.

There are stories and reflections from Gawad Kalinga volunteers, some of them only students at the time they became involved. There are also brief essays from personalities in the worlds of politics and business, talking about what interested them in Gawad Kalinga and how they or their institutions contributed to the cause. Among these are PLDT tycoon Manny Pangilinan and President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

Members of the academe like Ateneo de Manila University head Fr. Ben Nebres, SJ, and members of the media like Inquirer columnist Conrado de Quiros also offer their sentiments about Meloto and Gawad Kalinga.

"We do not lack for housing projects," writes de Quiros. "But Gawad Kalinga is more than that..."

"It does build, but not just in physical space, in the rough and tumble of impoverished neighborhoods, also in spiritual space, in the rough and tumble of impoverished minds. It does build, but not just houses...It is empowering."


Photo taken by Gus Vibal for Vibal Foundation. Licensed under Creative Commons .