Bringing school to the kids
Squatters, slums, and ghettos, whatever you call them they are found all over the world. When we pass by areas like these in our cars or buses, in our cities and neighborhoods we do exactly that, we pass them by. Efren Peñaflorida however saw something different.
At 16, Efren didn’t forget his beginnings by garbage-laden beaches as he gathered 3 other friends and began teaching children in slum areas in his home of Cavite, a province bordering the southern shore of Manila bay.
More than a decade later, Efren’s Dynamic Teen Company (DTC) has been supported by 10,000 volunteers, many of whom left the gangs and drugs that plague the Cavite slums.
Linkage!
(Photo: Lilibeth Frondoso / CNN)
I am so much humbled by this man and his friends. He has been doing this since he was 16 up to now? Wow, just doing this once will make me faint! Such an admirable man and I guess we can help him by providing him with assistance. The true Filipino heroic spirit needs not to be political and violent. This young man proves that being a hero is innate in every human being. That’s genuine heroism!
EXACTLY! It reminds me of the saying, “if we all do a little, we can do a lot.” Not only because, as you said, being a hero is innate in every human being. But also because there is the possibility that if each of us does a lot, we can only imagine the outcome of that too.
“…Let our hearts be willing to accommodate the needy, the desperate and the hopeless simply by extending our hand to them, and there you will unfold the hero that is in you.” -Efren G. Peñaflorida, Jr.