Pinoy doctors in US return to rebuild motherland

Dr. Primo Andres and his wife Sylvia, doctors Dionisio and Zita Yorro and Jose and Stella Evangelista have spent half of their lives serving the United States as top physicians. Now, they have deemed it is time to give back and serve their native land by helping Gawad Kalinga (GK).

Being the most successful and richest doctors in the US, they have been actively involved in various charitable organizations, but none has had as much impact on them as the GK project.

These doctors believe that giving their wealth to GK is not just doling out donations.

For them, getting involved in the GK project is doing their share of the work of nation-building. The GK project is the greatest cause of their lifetime.

"For us, this is rebuilding our motherland," Primo Andres said.

Translated, the Filipino term "gawad kalinga" means to "give care." GK is a community-building project in the Philippines that seeks a holistic solution to poverty. It provides a concrete plan for rebuilding the Philippines aiming to build 700,000 homes in 7,000 communities in seven years (GK777). Each GK village, composed of 30 to 100 poorest of the poor families, is created by volunteer caretakers and the poor themselves through the bayanihan spirit. The recipients of GK housing grants build each others’ homes and a peaceful community free of crime and vices, where neighbors know and care for one another. Today, there are 100 GK villages all over the Philippines. The doctors are in town to visit the people living in the 30 homes they helped to build in Towerville, Bulacan.

The Thomasian GK Village Towerville was built last year and funded by the University of Santo Tomas Medical Alumni Association in America (USTMAA), to which the Yorro, Andres and the Evangelista families belong. They are alumni of the UST medical school batch 1968. USTMAA is the largest association of Filipino doctors in the US. Zita Yorro recounted how she came to know GK and how this has been a life-changing experience for her and her family. Yorro said they first came to know GK through her brother, a Couples for Christ member.

Yorro’s brother spoke wistfully about GK and how it has been helping poor Filipinos rise from poverty. In 2004, Yorro invited the Evangelistas, the Andres family and the rest of her family to celebrate the launching of GK 777 in Chicago, where Dylan Wilk and GK founder Tony Meloto spoke about GK.

After Meloto and Wilk finished their speeches, Yorro said they were all moved to tears. Yorro was particularly touched by Wilk’s dedication and commitment to GK. Wilk, a native of England, used his earnings from selling an online game he invented to help build houses for GK.

"Here is a foreign guy who loves our country and who has donated his lifetime savings to build houses for the poor and here we are doing nothing," Yorro and her husband Oni said. "We were embarrassed and we said we have to do something. After listening to Dylan, we were all hooked." Andres said another successful radiologist in the US, Dr. Charlie Capati, offered to delay his retirement so he could use three months’ worth of his salary pay for a donation of houses for GK.

After the meeting with Meloto in Chicago, these doctors began raising funds here in the Philippines and in the US to donate more houses to the GK project. Their visits to the Philippines have also become more frequent as they got more involved in the GK projects. Dr. Joe Evangelista said GK exceeds all of the criteria of the kind of charitable undertaking they’ve been seeking for many years — something that is not simply doling out money to the poor. He said they are simply guided by the principle of Meloto: "We are going by what Tony Meloto believes, that the people are basically good but because of the environment, they become bad."

"Now if you change their environment and give them livelihood and instill in them values formation, they become good, self-sufficient and productive citizens," Evangelista said. "Eventually, the spirit of helping others who are also poor like themselves, will rub on them and it will have a multiplying effect."
"This is not doling out or mendicancy," he said. "We want to give them an opportunity to stand up, to have a sense of ownership. We want to give them an opportunity to move up the ladder in life."
"If you look at the overall picture here, we are not doing a simple charity work, we are doing our share in nation-building. We want to help our fellowmen... rise from poverty," Oni said. Dr. Evangelista and his wife, Stella, believe in GK’s holistic approach.

The GK villages provide homes and the basics — water, electricity and livelihood - as well as teach good values.

"We believe in the adage that if you give a man a fish, he will remain hungry, but teach him to fish and he wont be hungry anymore," Evangelista said. Yorro also cited the role of Couples for Christ (CFC)in the values formation of the people living in GK villages, saying this helps the people remain kind, trustworthy and responsible Christians.

"The CFC plays a pivotal role in the values formation of the people. We see them conduct seminars and meeting for the couples in the villages and we see a transformation. Christ becomes the center of the communities," Yorro said. The doctors are happy that GK’s corporate sponsors and partners are providing the livelihood for the people living in the GK communities. Evangelista even challenged the country’s legislators to donate their pork barrel funds to GK, because this is an important vehicle that would improve the lives of Filipinos. The Yorros, Evangelistas and the Andreses like the idea of being involved in the GK projects. Twice a year, they come to the Philippines to check and connect with the people to whom they are giving homes and hope — to see what these people have been doing and ensure that they are leading better and righteous lives. For the Andreses, the feeling of getting involved in the GK community is pure bliss. Andres, a cardiologist who owns a heart center in Terra Haute, Indiana, has donated a village that was built in his wife’s hometown in Davao.

"It is hard to comprehend Gawad Kalinga until you get involved," the Andres couple said. "You talk about concepts, about helping Filipinos but you won’t get that kind of fulfillment helping others until you get involved." Andres said it is his continuing commitment to see to it that the people, especially the children realize their dreams for a better life.
"It’s our commitment to get in touch with the people in the village," he said. "You see, it’s not just planting the seeds or goodbye after donating. We are like parents who look after them. We try to give them opportunities and provide those opportunities. It gives us joy to truly see them progress in their lives." Now the doctors want to do more for GK and provide a new culture of health consciousness — first by changing the slum environment where disease breeds and by making the poor more aware of standard health practices like proper hygiene, nutrition and preventive health care which they will call the Gawad Kalusugan.

Gawad Kalusugan is GK’s health arm to be spearheaded by the doctors in the United States and headed by Capati.

Stella Evangelista said they felt it was time to put up a Gawad Kalusugan clinic in every village to oversee the health of the people, especially the children.Andres said they made a survey in a typical village and found that 60 percent of children are positive for tuberculosis. They also found that there were no funds earmarked for treating children with TB.