How many of you have a Facebook account? And how do you use your Facebook account?
Most of us probably use our Facebook account to stay in touch with family and friends (and find long-lost friends as well). We upload pictures and videos, post status messages that range from the mundane “what I had for breakfast” to rants about lousy customer service, links to interesting articles, and other socializing activities.
But here is a story, a true story, about how Facebook was used by my blogger friend, Jay Jaboneta, to actually change the lives of children from the Layag-Layag community in Barangay Talon-Talon, Zamboanga City, Philippines.
Jay’s story started out as nothing out of the ordinary. He traveled to Mindanao (southern part of the Philippines) last October 2010 to talk about The Role of New Media in Nation-Building in a Mindanao Blogging Summit. Having been involved in the last electoral campaign for now President Noy Aquino, Jay met with some of the Mindanao campaign volunteers during his free time and there first heard about the children of this small community.
The kids WADED to school!
Jay told me that the water part that around 200 kids had to wade in is around 1 kilometer. In low tide, the water comes up to their knees but during high tide, those who cannot afford to pay for a boat ride have to wade in chest-deep water to shore. That’s not the end of it. Once they reach shore, the school is still some 1 kilometer away so those who have no money to ride a tricycle still need to walk the rest of that way to Talon-Talon Elementary School.
Continue reading “When Facebook goes beyond socializing and changes lives”