Engagement Not Judgment

By Floyd Whaley

MAKING IT RAIN DONATIONS Tony Meloto touches all corners of society to raise money for Gawad Kalinga
Photo by Kevin Handorf

Standing in a mud puddle in the pouring rain, in one of Manila’s slum areas, a scruffy white-haired man in tattered loafers chats comfortably with some of the poorest people in the Philippines.

“What were you planting?” he asks a 92-year-old landless farmer from the central Philippines. The old farmer describes how he grew sweet potatoes on his farm until repeated storms, and political violence in his village, drove him to a Manila slum in search of a better life. The elderly farmer and his deeply impoverished neighbors talk with the white-haired man—Tony Meloto—like old friends.

A few hours later, Mr. Meloto can be found again chatting comfortably with what appears to be another group of old friends, only now he is sitting in the posh Manila Polo Club. Everything has changed, except for Meloto’s muddy loafers and rain-soaked short-sleeve shirt. Across from him is the retired president of a multinational company. On one side is a member of one of the wealthiest families in the Philippines. An established international theatrical performer sits at the table as well.

“We bring the resources of the richest people in the country to bear on the needs of the poorest people in the country,” explains Mr. Meloto, founder of the nongovernment organization Gawad Kalinga. “We honor not only the poor, but we honor those people who help the poor.”

Mr. Meloto, a 59-year-old former marketing executive, had a religious experience in the mid-1980s that drove him into the Manila slums to help the city’s poor. In 1995, he launched an organization that he called Gawad Kalinga, meaning “to give care.”

Though born out of Catholicism, deep in the heart of a Manila slum, the organization has spread globally. It supports, and is supported by, people of all faiths, and its associates can be found on the leafy campus of Harvard University, as well as the poorest areas of the Philippines.

When Mr. Meloto, and Gawad Kalinga, received the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership in 2006, the judges concluded: “Gawad Kalinga has thousands of faces.”

“These are 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 Gawad Kalinga villages with training and services; of executives, lawyers, doctors, architects, and other professionals. These are also the faces of over two hundred thousand grateful beneficiaries.”

Gawad Kalinga (GK) has built more than 35,000 houses in the Philippines. Their brightly colored GK villages offer clean, safe living environments for impoverished families. Supporting this effort is a virtual Who’s Who of the country’s wealthiest families and political elite as well as leaders of some of the largest, high-profile corporations in the Philippines.

“We focus on partnerships instead of fundraising,” says Mr. Meloto. “Fundraising is not sustainable.” As a result, the organization has found some unlikely partners in its efforts to house and help the poor.

“Wealthy landowners have found that if they donate part of their property for a GK village, that land will become a safe, productive area,” says Mr. Meloto. “Crime and insurgency goes down, and political support comes into the area, in the form of roads and schools and clinics.

“This increases the land values in the area and the wealthy landowner benefits. We now have landowners vying to donate property to us for GK villages. We have an overabundance of land.”

Gawad Kalinga’s philosophy of building partnerships to help the poor appears to have no bounds.

JUST LIKE OLD FRIENDS Tony Meloto (right) chats with one of the residents of a Gawad Kalinga village in Manila.
Photo by Kevin Handorf

“We even involve corrupt politicians,” says Mr. Meloto. “If he is 10% good, we engage that 10%. If he loses the election, or gets caught in a scandal, we just take his signs off our villages. We are involved in engagement, not judgment.”

Gawad Kalinga’s sterling reputation—its corporate partners include top law firms and accountancies—and its ability to nimbly adjust its operations to incorporate improvements in its work allow it to function like a small NGO while wielding the resources of a large development organization.

Mr. Meloto contrasts this to traditional development organizations, which he says are hobbled by the operational deficiencies of “projects and programs.”

“Projects are for a limited duration. They aren’t sustainable,” he says. “And programs focus on a narrow aspect of society. They aren’t holistic. These things don’t help form the values that keep people out of poverty for life.”

Large development organizations are susceptible to institutional blind spots, especially regarding the role of men in development, he says. “Development organizations have a gender bias against men.”

“Assistance is funneled to the women in the house. Men are left without the skills training and values formation they need to support their family, so they fall back into the habits that perpetuate poverty,” he explains. “We include men in our assistance programs. They are the builders of their homes and their neighbors’ homes. We don’t give up on the man of the house.”

Mr. Meloto’s outspoken advocacy of partnerships between the poorest and the wealthiest caught the attention of Tony Gonzales, the affable former Secretary of Tourism for the Philippines. Just as Mr. Meloto has done with hundreds of other high-profile supporters, he did not ask Mr. Gonzales for a donation. He made him a partner.

“I wanted to learn more about them before I made a commitment,” says Mr. Gonzales. “I visited a GK village, and it was a moving experience. After that, I didn’t hesitate to offer assistance.”

Mr. Gonzales is now busy working to make some GK villages into tourist destinations, thereby bringing revenue into the communities while at the same time promoting the work of Gawad Kalinga to international travelers.

While munching on pork rinds at the Manila Polo Club, Mr. Meloto listens patiently to an overly complex question about whether his organization incorporates urban renewal best practices into its housing projects.

“You don’t have to have a PhD to help people,” he responds. “People talk about best practices. Not only are we using best practices, we created many of these best practices.”

In an instant, his eyes dart across the room and he sees a woman in an elegant black dress entering. Her family owns one of the largest conglomerates in the Philippines. “Excuse me,” he says and bounds toward her.

Gawad Kalinga is about to get another partner. •

Floyd Whaley, senior editor of Development Asia, operates Asia Editorial Services. His work has appeared in USA Today, The Los Angeles Times, Discovery Channel Magazine, and many other media outlets. He is currently updating the Insight Guide to Southeast Asia.