It was Jill Beckingham, wife of UK Ambassador Peter Beckingham, who first told me about Gawad Kalinga. She recounted that a young English millionaire, Dylan Wilkes, had sought a meaning in life deeper than the mere enjoyment of wealth. After scouting for possible beneficiaries, he discovered Gawad Kalinga and becoming profoundly impressed with it, sold his possessions and threw his lot with the project. So convinced was he of its merits that he is now a part not only of GK but also of its founder’s family, having married one of Meloto’s daughters! All Meloto children are involved with GK; an only son left a well-paying job abroad to join it.
How did Gawad Kalinga come about? I quote the citation:
Asia’s vast cities-of-the-poor are a hard fact. Despite decades of economic development programs and foreign aid and the earnest efforts of foundations and NGOs, not to mention the sweet promises of politicians, great millions of people of Asia still live in poverty. In the Philippines, nearly half of the country’s 84 million people are credibly said to live below the poverty line. Forty percent of its urban families occupy what the ADB calls "makeshift dwellings in informal settlements." Slums, in other words. Antonio Meloto believes these disheartening facts reveal his country’s failure "to work for the collective good." As executive director of Gawad Kalinga Community Development Foundation, he is changing this.
Born to humble circumstances in Bacolod, Meloto attended Ateneo on a scholarship and embarked upon a successful business. In 1985, an encounter with the Catholic organization Couples for Christ caused him to reassess his priorities. Meloto joined the organization fulltime and, in 1995, launched a work-with-the-poor ministry in Bagong Silang, a huge squatter relocation site. He called his ministry Gawad Kalinga, "to give care."
In Bagong Silang, Meloto immersed himself in the lives of slum dwellers. He learned that "a slum environment develops slum behavior." But he also found goodness, even in the hardened gang members. Slum dwellers needed love and spiritual nourishment, but they also needed dignity and decent living conditions. It was not enough to pray for them, he decided. "We should do something!"
Meloto decided to build houses. Drawing support and volunteers from Couples for Christ, he began transforming the neediest area of Bagong Silang into a viable neighborhood with safe, sturdy, and attractive homes – the first Gawad Kalinga village. In doing so, he formulated guidelines for later GK projects. New homes would be allotted only to the poorest families. They could not be sold. And although the beneficiaries would not have to pay for their new homes, they would have to help GK’s volunteers build them and to abide by neighborhood covenants.
As Bagong Silang Village blossomed, Meloto identified new sites for GK villages and spread the word through Couples for Christ. He solicited donations passionately, offering "see-for-yourself" exposures to convince skeptics. Through the ANCOP (Answering the Cry of the Poor) Foundation he brought expatriate Filipinos into GK’s growing web of partners and supporters. Meanwhile, he introduced health, education, and livelihood components to GK villages to equip the occupants with skills and resources to rise in life.
As word of GK circulated at home and abroad, it tapped into a reservoir of longing. Many Filipinos despaired over their country’s stubborn poverty and yearned to do something about it. They flocked to the movement, convinced by Meloto that their money and efforts could really make a difference. Donations soared and GK villages began to proliferate throughout the Philippines.
Meloto guided the organization to embrace all comers. "We provide the framework," he says. "We also provide the principles and the spirit. But anyone can come in." This philosophy led GK into cooperative projects with corporations, civic organizations, families, schools, and government agencies as well as over 300 governors and mayors. When typhoons destroyed thousands of homes in Luzon in 2005, GK joined a dozen government agencies and private organizations to build 40,000 new ones. In Mindanao, Gawad Kalinga-led "Peace Builds," fostered by local mayors and built by Christian, Muslim, and indigenous-Filipino volunteers, resulted in hundreds of new homes for displaced Muslims.
It is often said that Tony Meloto is the face of Gawad Kalinga. But the movement he spawned is now much bigger than himself. In truth, GK has thousands of faces – faces of every Filipino ethnicity, faith, and social class – of donors at home and abroad who are providing the money and land for new villages; of volunteers across the Philippines who are joining their families, and friends and schoolmates, and officemates, and fellow church members to build houses and to provide GK villages with training and services; of executives, lawyers, doctors, architects, and other professionals. These are also the faces of over 100,000 grateful beneficiaries.
Today more than 850 GK villages span the Philippines. Alongside those sponsored by Filipinos abroad, such as Norway Village, Swiss Village,, and North Carolina Village, there are more than 100 others sponsored by major corporations. And this is just the beginning. GK is committed to building 7,000 new communities by the year 2010.
GK neighborhoods contain 50 to 100 brightly painted homes and are conspicuously tidy and clean. There are flowers, plants, pleasant walkways, plus a school, a livelihood center, and a multipurpose hall. Participating families are mentored by a Couples for Christ caretaker team that organizes volunteers to assist in education, health, and livelihood projects. In many, clinics provide routine medical care. Through a self-governing neighborhood association in each village, residents are becoming stewards of their own stable and vibrant communities.
The objective is transformation. Meloto described a mature GK village as "a beautiful middle-class community. Crime has virtually disappeared. Former street children are now in school. The idle are now leading productive lives." As for those who contribute to GK’s mission, they are transformed, too, by their acts of goodwill and warm camaraderie.
The self-effacing Meloto says, "I believe in the Filipino’s immense potential." Thinking of people like himself who formerly ignored the poverty around them, he says, "Before, we were part of the problem. Now, we are part of the solution."
In electing Antonio Meloto to receive the 2006 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership, the trustees recognize his inspiring Filipinos to believe with pride that theirs can be a nation without slums.