Oplan Milagro

Over the last 12 years alone, I must have taken over 1,000 flights. And never have I missed one. Until last month, when certain things that were out of my control forced a situation where I was literally turned away at the airport. It was a simple oversight that was easily fixed during business hours, but because this was an early Sunday morning, I was basically told that I was not allowed to board my flight to Japan. Period. 

Naturally I was upset. Livid even. Because even if I could fly out Monday, I would miss the event I was meant to attend, so it would be pointless. But as sad as it was, it turned out to be around the exact same time we started Oplan Hatid, which was a volunteer effort to offer our personal vehicles to drive survivors where they needed to go. In fact, I drove straight from the airport to Villamor, where I went on to experience the busiest and most incredible month of my life. 

For two weeks straight (with the exception of a failed coup attempt, but more on that later) we worked around the clock, either driving survivors home, or picking up donations, or putting my cyber-begging bowl out on social media asking for volunteers, drivers, food, tents, tables, chairs, etc. I tried asking for sleep, but nobody was willing to donate that.

But just as the volunteer effort went into full swing, we were told to pack up our things and head home –– do not pass, go, do not collect 200. Basically shut down. Turned out that someone, somewhere, had decided to move everything to Aguinaldo, and had already appointed a government head of transport to continue what we were doing. They even used the same name: Oplan Hatid. In other words, from our standpoint at least, it was nothing short of a coup. 

People cried foul. It hit national news. Within a day I must have given 20 interviews on TV, newspapers, websites, magazines as well as AM and FM radio. Less than 8 hours after that, the entire relief effort was transferred back to Villamor and Major Diego Pilar personally called to invite us to come back.

This time, more cameras showed up. And every microphone or recorder that was stuck in my face was only looking for the answer to one question: “Who was it that tried to shut you down?” 

There were talks about a turf war, but instead of pointing fingers, however, we all agreed as a group to not even try to find out and instead use the energy saved from that into driving people home. We figured if Major Pilar was big enough to ask for help, the least we could do was to pay that back by just giving it. 

So while I still cannot tell you who it was that ordered the now famous transfer and the shut down, I can tell you who it wasn’t, and we have since built up a great relationship with the Airforce. So let’s just leave it like this: It was a security issue –– ang daming naging insecure. 

But once again, a major setback turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because the media attention only motivated a new army of volunteers that were tired of hearing of politics, corruption and epals paralyzing relief efforts, so they ended up throwing even more support behind us. 

The common thread here was that everyone felt that every drop of effort they donated went straight to those who needed it most. No middle man, no spoilage, and nothing that could be stockpiled in a warehouse and given out during elections. This was love on wheels.

And only after over 2,000 volunteers collectively drove over 20,000 people home, did we feel it was an appropriate time to hand our operation over to the government; we had helped them cope with the surge, but once the flights coming in dwindled and it became a trickle, it was time to take the training wheels off and let them take it the rest of the way home. 

Sure I became emotionally attached to the whole project, but I would be lying if I didn’t say I was looking forward to getting my life back and flying out for the Race of Champions (ROC) on December 15, which is another event I really look forward to. Problem was, our volunteers were still like 110v appliances plugged into 220v outlets. They were so energized and still wanted to help. Badly. Actually, it was more like harassing to help –– if that makes any sense at all. 

These good souls had found an avenue to give. And many of us felt wrong about delivering a family of survivors to relatives who were in many cases, much worse off than them financially; it felt we were placing the problem on someone else’s doorstep. So rather than waste all this incredible energy by turning the key the other way and switching off the love, we decided as a core group to make use of all that generosity and kick it up a notch by developing the second phase of our project to help rebuild the lives of the Yolanda survivors, by organizing a massive emergency job fair. 

Within a day, we were granted a permit by DOLE to hold one on, you guessed it, December 15. The same day as my race of champions trip. 

I didn’t even get enough time to react before I get a text message from my host saying “We regret to inform you that this year’s race of champions has been cancelled due to the political unrest and violence in Bangkok. We do hope you understand.”

I put my phone down, looked up to the sky and asked God, “Are you trying to tell me something?” 

I’m not sure if it was from the lack of sleep, or that I was on my third beer, but I swear I heard a booming voice in my head say, “duh?”

With that, we embarked on the most ambitious plan of all: Oplan Trabaho,  with the sole goal of finding 5,000 survivors a job before Christmas. It seemed impossible, but then again, so did driving home 20,000 people in two weeks. 

So, with barely a day to breathe, it was back into overdrive. We all put our heads down and did what we did best––trust in God, and the kindness of  complete strangers. As big a leap of faith as that may sound, He was the only one here with experience. And since then, I have seen more miracles in the last 30 days than most men would even hear about in a lifetime. But the biggest miracle of all was slowly being built, one good deed at a time.

Despite the fact that none of us had never been to a job fair before, much less organize one, we got issued a permit at no cost from DOLE in one phone conversation. I made a shout out on Facebook and Twitter, and the good folks at Ferrari pulled a favor from Robin Bernabe, who, despite it being the busiest time of year for his events company, loaned us a 5,000 square meter tent, while the Soong family coughed up the P80,000 labor cost to erect it.

Now we needed a venue. Carlos Celdran helped us secure a permit at Luneta, and before we knew it, as soon as we announced it, hundreds and thousands of little angels disguised as regular Filipinos started flying in with offers. One put up his hand for a 10-wheeler truck to transport the massive tent; another offered the sound system, while hundreds of others offered generators, electricians, tables, chairs, laptops, wifi, clothes, food, etc. 

It was the purest form of volunteerism in action that I have ever seen. 

Three little girls aged 12, 8 and 6 had heard about our operation on facebook and asked their father if they could meet me after seeing all these ‘wishes’ being granted after every post I made, because they concluded I must be the real Santa. 

Humored by the innocence of children, I agreed to see the little girls because I was touched by the fact that they were so inspired by what they were seeing unfold that they wanted to help, too. After telling them some stories of our survivors and volunteers, they handed me an envelope with the profits they made from a kiddopreneur event, where they sold piggy banks. They also charged P10 for the 8 year old to tell a joke, P20 for the eldest to sing, and P10s for the youngest to pose for a picture. 

They raised P9,070.  

Our friends from Teleserv gave up one of their most valuable and talented geniuses to build us a powerful website to register all the volunteers, applicants and employers, and within four hours, Bryan Zarzuella and Raffy David had something up that would have cost us at least a million bucks to outsource. 

We had everything in place. We now needed to get the word out. We needed some serious star power. We got one better –– we got Philippine STAR power when Miguel Belmonte offered the front page of this paper as well as their tabloids to announce the job fair. 

I even stooped and broke my own sacred social media rule and shamelessly posted the dreaded “Please share or Re Tweet this.” Within a day, Iza Calzado, Ding Dong Dantes, Lea Salonga, Phoemela Barranda, Rhian Ramos, Kim Atienza, Rovilson Fernandez, Marc Nelson and countless other stars with tens of millions of followers between them did so.

We started trending on Twitter. Other papers, networks and websites quickly picked it up. We asked our volunteer drivers to call the families they took home and still kept in touch with. Miraculously, over 50 percent of them still did. We got the DSWD master list of arrivals from Villamor and one volunteer offered to encode it manually into a database and use a text blast machine to send messages to the survivors. All 20,000 of them. 

Globe and SMART even agreed to work together to power up the free SMS content on our website and worked side by side in the tent providing free internet to power the online registration. They both also gave away free sim cards with load to anyone who asked; Globe even gave away 200 cellphones to those who had lost theirs, while government departments like NBI, DOLE, SSS and the like set up a mobile station to help rebuild the documents of those who had no more papers. 

By the time we opened the tent after a special mass that was offered, 435 volunteers and 460 employers offering 1,481 jobs welcomed in 1,711 survivors in and in under 8 hours, sent 721 people home with a new job. A new life. Most even offered to pay in advance or pay weekly salaries just to get them started. 

The clothing company Bench employed 97 people; stars like Pia Magalona personally sat in our un air-conditioned tent all day and hired a driver for herself. The executive Editor of the Manila Bulletin, Pinky Colemenares, sat on a monoblock chair for 8 hours, even forgetting to eat, just so she could help register each applicant. 

It is true that God made man in his own image; I saw Him in every face that turned up that day. Even those who couldn’t find work walked away with clothes, food, a gift pack of essentials, a free sim card or phone, and thanks to some private donors, as much as 3,000 pesos cash, which was given away very discreetly once they had exhausted all options of getting a job.

And although we didn’t hit our goal of 5,000 jobs, an HR specialist pointed out to me that we had achieved over four times the industry average for successful applicants for any type of regular job fair. And I replied by saying, that’s only because there was absolutely nothing regular about it.