FIRE: An Urgent Request from the Philippines

CHRF has just received an urgent request from our project partners in the Philippines where there has been a massive fire in a community we have been working to help.  Just a few months ago our CHRF team met with project partners in this same community to continue to find ways to help and bring life and hope to the most needy, desperate and forgotten children.

Tragically the fire took the lives of children and adults and now hundreds of children and their families are completely homeless, living in a covered basketball court to stay out of the rains. Together we are raising support to help these children and their community by raising funds to help buy food, clothing and materials to help rebuild homes.

Our project partner writes:

“People are in desperate need. No house, no clothes, not even a plate to eat from. They've lost everything. Some are in a worse state than others, but the hundreds of fire victims have basically nothing more than the clothes on their back, and perhaps a few little items they were able to grab in the panic and confusion of escaping the flames.”

“Smoky Mountain” as the community is called, was already a tragic place even before the fire where thousands of families who cannot afford homes move to live in tiny shacks made out of trash and scavenge through garbage dumps in order to find anything they can trade for a meal. The area is also infamous for making coal out of old wood, one of the only ways that these poor forgotten people can make less than a dollar for an entire day's hard work.

CHRF has worked with our partners to help these families and many hungry children in the surrounding communities, feeding children for as little as 10 cents a meal. But, not only can we help feed these children, our partners have reached out to the young children in the community and even provided them with an education! Enabling the next generation to move out of such drastic poverty.  Without the great efforts of our CHRF project partners these children would have gone their whole lives without any schooling!

But now the great progress in this community has been interrupted by this massive fire which also has burnt down one of the school buildings. Please support our efforts to help the children in this community and help our partners rebuild the school building that is changing children’s lives and allowing them to have a future outside of the impoverished world that is all they know.

In addition to re-building the school our partners in the area will also help the families rebuild their homes and, by doing so, help the community back to its feet. From everyone on the CHRF team,  Thank you for your help, thank you for enabling us to support efforts to help these children around the world who are in such desperate need of God's love and mercy.