Renovating schools, running pop-up dental clinics, and developing disaster response agencies in the Philippines
In August 2017, I travelled a remote part of the Philippines to volunteer for 2 weeks working on a number of projects with other UK charity partners whilst I searched for my passion.
Along with 20 others, we’d come to Cebu city, that’s located in the Central Visayas region of the Philippines, and partnered with other volunteers from ‘Serve on’, a emergency response charity who had come to pass on some of their hard-earned skills to ERUF (Emergency Response Unit Foundation), and ‘Dentaid’, a charity that provides dental care and oral health education to people in need around the world, that had come to run free walk-in clinics to students who wouldn’t ordinarily have access to a dentist.
We, the ‘greyshirts’ of Team Rubicon UK (so called because our working rig consists of a grey t-shirts!), would be renovating a classroom at the same school that Dentaid would be running a dental clinic, and also nearby to Serve On’s training space, so that we can augment and support both of the charities when they needed it. It was great to see 3 British charities relying on each other to work on different outcomes, and bringing some very different skills to the benefit of such an interesting place!
It was my second deployment with the charity and was great to be back out doing good things with good people. I’d spent 2 weeks in remote Nepal near the epicentre of the 2015 earthquake, helping to construct earthquake-resistant shelters to increase community resilience for when the next one happens. It’d been a few years since I’d transitioned from the Royal Marines, and so these projects satisfy a very strong urge to help others and be nearer to these places.
I’d decided to bring my camera with me, as the charity was still in its infancy and so couldn’t spare the funds to commission a photographer to come with us to document the great work of the project. Realising I could fill this gap, and some of my own needs for helping people, seemed a very obvious win for us both. The photos could be used on their website and in social media to encourage people to donate to the charity, and businesses to support with financial, services, and product donations, and I would be fulfilling a dream of being a photojournalist (albeit without a budget!).
We fly from the UK to Mactan–Cebu International Airport and are driven to what will be our home for the next few weeks, it’s a small disused building at the local fire station, but we’re all excited to be back with our fellow volunteers, chatting and catching up on what we’ve all been up to. The community is referred to as ‘The TRibe', thanks in part to the convenience of the word fitting with the brand, but also how well it encapsulates the camaraderie that results from these small moments of shared hardship.
Our first working day is spent surveying the classroom space, what needs to be done, and what resources we need – so that we can procure the tools and ensure that we’re all working safely. It may be volunteering, but the risk involved with such an experience needs to be managed with brand reputation in mind, cavalier approaches don’t deserve space in doing what we’re doing.
Serve On and Dentaid busy set up for their respective projects, and so some of us greyshirts help them out – it feels good to be able to support our fellow charity volunteers and breeds better cohesion in the cramped accommodation at night. They come from similar cultures, and have similar values, so although we’re from different organisations, it feels like one big, unified team.
As we work on the refurbishing the classroom, the students are especially pleased to see us, and many speak to us with incredible English language skills. Whilst I feel bad at only speaking a very small number of other languages, it’s incredibly inspiring to see that our work will be helping out their study they seem to value so highly. Whenever we pass them in the hall to collect resources, they come over to say hello, take photos with us, and have huge smiles on their faces. It’s heart-warming, and I make notes that I will recommend everyone to do something like this in their lives if they can do.
Helping out Dentaid
One of my days is spent helping Dentaid manage the patients when they come to get their teeth checked, and if necessary, undergo surgery to correct anything.
The dentists are ebullient and upbeat, despite putting in some incredibly long hours doing what would be their day jobs back at home, but at a faster rate. I bring my camera to document the day and can’t help but be surprised seeing the happiness on the children’s faces when they undergo the checks. They seem completely unfazed by sitting in the chairs and having the dental teams inspect their teeth. It puts my own experiences of seeing the dentist into context when I see the effect the experience has on them.
They have a thorough triage process to ensure that the kids who need work early, get put at the front of the queue, so as not to impact their school work, yet also not miss them out. It’s another heart-warming moment that puts my life into context, in what has already been a week of heart-warming moments.
Supporting the Serve on team
The next few days are spent helping Serve On carry out their theory and practical training sessions. They’re teaching the Filipino disaster responders to use the full range of earthquake, hurricane, and flooding equipment that looks complicated!
We start off in the classroom talking about how the equipment works, its limitations, and how to use it as part of a bigger response strategy, so that everyone has a chance to handle it and see how it works before we go and use it in the field.
The afternoon is spent running different skills practices, it’s tiring work just watching them; however I can see the benefits that this project is having immediately when the responders show they know their way around the equipment quickly.
The next few days is spent with much of the same, a morning teaching the theory behind the equipment and how it can be used, with the afternoon using it. I recognise it as a tactic used in the military to maximise on attention, as a day spent solely focussed on theory can be hard work for some, whilst days spent developing the cognitive skills without the theory behind it, can seem like it’s wasted time.
After 2 weeks, our time in the Philippines comes to an end. Part of me is a little glad at this as the humidity is the worst I’ve experienced anywhere in the world, and results in a bad rash appearing on the inside of my arms, however the larger part of me is sad at having to say goodbye to my volunteer friends, and the students who’ve been incredibly welcoming and caring, making us laugh every day, and distracting us from our own challenges long enough for us to put it into context.
I’ll fly back to the UK to carry on with my Master’s degree, and working on a glut of new projects. But this trip will stay with me and keep giving my life colour when an unanticipated response deployment comes almost as soon as I get home.
Image credit: Haus of Hiatus
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In 2009, I entered my first Ironman triathlon, as a way to test myself ahead of entering 15-and-a-half months of Royal Marines officer training. I figured I wanted to know that I was capable of long distances and perseverance under strain, and so what better to build those qualities than a very long multidisciplinary race!