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| Taken during the TSMS Relief Distribution held last Saturday, August 11. |
As mentioned in my previous blogpost, it is now rainy season in the Philippines, which denotes bad news- typhoon season. Due to climate change, more typhoons come and leave disasters to certain regions of our country. The last few clusters of typhoons early this year were not as terrible as Habagat Haikui- which lasted for exactly one week (August 1-8), which makes it worse than Typhoon Ondoy (Ketsana) last September 2009! The damage done by the Haikui was almost as massive as Ondoy's, except that flooding was more intense and it lasted for days. Due to immense flooding and non-stop raining, many classes that were located in affected areas were suspended for a week. It was really heartbreaking watching the news everyday- death tolls increasing, cars floating, flood levels that reached house roofs, landslides occurring, people evacuating from the flooded areas... many people even assembled the week-long calamity as "The Part II of Noah's Ark"! It was really scary. The skies were dark, wind was blowing really hard every day and non stop "pit pats" were heard from my roof and windows. I really missed Mr. Sun. In tragedies like this, you will see one of the good values a Filipino is known for- "bayanihan" or in English, cooperation or team work.
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| Yes.. this is a photo of Haikui on the map. o.O You could just imagine how terrible the devastation it left on the country. |
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What's gonna work? :)   
  
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During the weeklong calamity, along with 4 other alumnus from my school, we organized a relief distribution, carrying the name of our school. Thankfully, our sudden plans were approved by the our school principal! We created a Facebook group and a lot of former and present students, including teachers, joined it. We were in awe with the number of people who really wanted to reach out and help. Because of the support from the students, posting and asking for helping hands from others, we ended up trending on Twitter as well!
Visit us on:
Facebook | Twitter
TSMS Relief Distribution Guidebook
Visit us on:
Facebook | Twitter
TSMS Relief Distribution Guidebook
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| We trended only for two minutes.. =))) but it was fun while it lasted. :)) |
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| A donation box made by Madel, one of our admin. :) |
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| Our poster was displayed in Moonleaf Don Antonio branch! :) |
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| A coinbank made by Topel, my classmate. |
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| A donation box was placed also in School Stop, Don Antonio. |
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| Thankful that many dropped off donations- these are donations given during DAY III. ;) We have four other locations to drop off donations and we allotted three days for donations to be dropped off in these areas! |
After some meetings with the rest of the administrators, we decided to conduct the packing of the relief distributions on Saturday, August 11 in which according to PAGASA (Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration), Haikui would have left the country by then. I must confess that organizing this relief distribution made the admins and I stressful, but seeing the effort the students and teachers have put upon and being able to reach out to others, we knew in our hearts that it was really worth it. We have packed over 400 bags and distributed these to victims affected in Marikina and Cainta. This experience also made me realize the love the students and I have for God, our country, our school.
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| Meeting with the admin! Third pic of lower left- (from L-R), Hershey, Bea, Klyde, Madel and me! Kim not pictured. |
