My Philippines Project Proposal - educating the poor

I am a great thinker. If I didnt have so many great ideas I would be a billionaire by now. I am very good at coming up with ideas, even developing them into business plans. But actually I care little for getting my hands dirty with execution. Interestingly that is my Filipino girlfriend's strength. So that might auger well for the future.

But I thought here was a good opportunity in the Philippines. Its actually a distraction for me - one of many. But here is the idea. Hopefully a Filipino airline executive will read my blog. Hopefully people will send books, if not on their own initiative, then through Philippine Airlines.

According to the Philippines Inquirer, a young mayor of Tabango Municipality in Leyte Province, the Philippines has been overseeing the development of a P5.8mil ($US120,000) modern library for his community. The municipality has been promised between P0.5-1mil to complete the construction, and its finished. I think alot of credit goes to the mayor for keeping this project alive for 6 years. The municipality has an income of just P30mil ($US700,000). The library has the capacity to hold 20,000 books, and today it has just a few hundred. I dont think this project needs any money. What it needs is people prepared to give books and for Philippine Airlines to distribute the books from around the world to fill the library.

The reason this is important is because Filipinos are poor thinkers. I get a sense of why theyare poor thinkers when I look at the way they are raised. They are not intellectually challenged. Worse still is that they are not raised with any sense of structure, or what we would call normalcy. They are without a doubt the most self-indulgent laxed people on the half of the earth - but thats just the poor ones. A great many of the aspirational ones are climbing over each other trying to build their own sense of security. I dont sense much empathy in this 'seemingly' Christian land. The reason I know its stuff is because I have a reasonable confortable life here. I live in a 3bedroom apartment, but I have blaring stereos on one side, planes flying overhead, 6-10 barking dogs in the street, 3 cocks next door, kids playing in the street, a pig feed factory next door. Actually I live in a subdivision, but this country is chaos, so you could end up with a factory operating out of your neighbourhood as I do next door.

Now I am an abstract thinker, and I find it hard to find peace in this country. My GF was raised by Americans, albeit Chinese ones, but she was raised from 19yo and she's amazing. Some credit has to go to her parents, as all three of their kids are successful, and all from a modest background. The kids in this country need a place to learn. A quiet place. Most dont live as I do. Many of them live in 1-2 room houses with 7 people - just 40-50m2 in area, on small 50-100m2 lots. Its noisy, its smelly, its disruptive. But what if there was a place - a quiet, air conditioned place which would attract kids because this place was too poor to have a shopping mall - just to experience the cool air lest theyever have the opportunity to buy anything. Parents are loving in the Philippines, but they are not the greatest intellectual role models. For this they need a library to escape to. Many kids dont go to school because there is no quiet home place to work.

In these poor areas, a library could be a 'mecca' for kids to learn. As long as they are prevented from talking, I think they would discover the merits of an education. But they need books. I know how important books are. I had few friends when I was young. I was different. I ended up in a library. Its a great place to start a life. Some people never get to one. In a library you can explore the world, get exposed to many 'secular' ideas. Libraries contain the greatest minds that ever lived. But they have to be used, and if they are going to be places of learning, then they need books!

If you work at Philippine Airlines, if you know someone that does, or if you have books which greatly influenced your life and you dont read it any more, consider taking it to Philippine Airlines or sending it to this school on your own initiative.