Social Capital, New Houses & Poverty Alleviation
[Because I was caught up in Dengue it took until now to finish… but here it is]
In the bowels of the beast
When last I went to Quezon City, Metro Manila in the Philippines I’d visited the slums of Payatas and had seen its grim beauty. On our first day this time around Joe Dean Sola of the He Cares Mission immersed us in the world of 150 families that live in the bowels of a high rise. I could capture it on my mobile’s video; but not the smell that was part of it — right above and partly open to the sewers. Maybe hard to imagine if you haven’t been there, but easy to remember once you have. And right there, in the midst of this imagine children playing, happily, wanting “high fives” and being excited about the visitors. Running, and jumping up and down, smiling, beaming…
There is just one way in and out, when fire or gangs come you are trapped. You cannot escape. Frankly, entering this world I was scared, had to face it and reminded myself to trust our guide and friend Joe Dean who knows many of the people living there. I truly felt like entering the bowels of the beast; the beast that doesn’t care, the relentless machine that at any moment can evict these squatters of its corridors and “rooms”. It’s mostly women and children that live and sleep in there and the men, if they have one, sleep in their Jeepny which produces a bit of income to sustain them. What stands out most when I look back to this immersion in the underworld is the sense of powerlessness or maybe rather the “life hanging on a thread” sensation. And I could write a lot about how come people live under such circumstances, but that will maybe come in a little while when I’ve spoken to many more that live in this and similar worlds.
From there we drove to Sinagtala, to meet the leaders of the community living in the slums that burnt down in April this year; I talked about that in my last post. This community is our main focus for the time being. It’s where we will be running our first prototype. A meeting that brought a lot of their worries about the master-plan to the fore — the construction of adequate housing for the inhabitants of that burnt down “corner” of a much larger slum; a place to start this journey with our strategic partner Argo Architects and it’s director Will Marcus whose engagement is an inspiration to me. JALA develops and implements the digital decentralized mutual credit infrastructure and supports the community building work necessary to sufficiently de-risk the loans needed to build the complex by issuing Social Equity Bonds as Security Tokens on the Holochain. A disruptive way in many respects allowing people now living in squalor to build a future for their families, by enabling them to own an apartment in the 5 story, carbon neutral, water and energy self-sufficient housing complex to be built there. (More in the last post.) In the meantime we have gained more traction and great support by stakeholders and the people of Uncompromise.com that will help us develop the strategy to make all this operational.
Their main worry was centered around the land ownership; something that seems a no-brainer to us is a hard concept for them — exchange a title to 36m² which they’ve built their “houses” on to, sometimes, live there with up to 6 families (yep, that’s right) for a 50m² apartment in a complex with 5 floors. As settlers and squatters that got the title to that land in the 70ies from the government for 10,000 Pesos, a land on which they’ve built their dwellings, being flooded for up to 20 times per year they are quite wary of some Westerners coming along and telling them that they have to exchange the two to make it all work.Luckily the support of the He Cares Mission, Catholic clergy, the district mayor and other authorities has now given us enough credibility that we could work through much of their questions on that day and a second time on Friday where we spent 5 hours in an intense q&a with around 50 people. Also, since they now understand that they themselves are going to be a crucial partner in the corporation to be formed that will effectively own the land and manage the facility, most of these fears were alleviated.
We could also explain how the funding is going to work; they self-select into groups of mutual trust of 6–12 people that, as a whole, are responsible for the monthly payment of the “rent to own.” And they have also come to agree on that they can afford that rent, as water and electricity will be included — money that is now “lost” to the utility companies and that will become part of the rent they can afford. We’ve still have quite a way to go until all pieces of this are effectively in place and not only understood but for an important part governed by them. After all, we are building a bridge to a decentralized, community centric, agent empowered, equitable future with an inclusive economy using novel tools… It really is a joy to me, to us, to be on this journey with them and see their faces and feel their warm welcome. And most of all, feel how community works.
The next day we visited the Promised Land, another of Her Cares Mission’s projects. The aim is for it to become an eco-village for families of street children to reunite, with eco-tourism and education and farming and much more. Will talked with the architects that will build a street and bridge there in the months to come. Maybe the way we set up the funding of Sinagtala will eventually be applicable to what is happening here on this beautiful land. And maybe here we can also test some of the potential of a cryptocurrency (a mutual credit system) that will connect people that need food and other farm produce directly with “consumers”.
A disclosure is needed here: I’m not a Catholic, and probably not even a Christian, although I do love the Holy Mary which to me is as Guan Yin, the Goddess of Compassion. What strikes me is that Joe Dean has taken it upon him, following what God told him, to help the street children in Manila. He is a man whose words and deeds are one, a rare species these days, a man whose faith I deeply respect. Also, my strategic partner in all of this is a devout Catholic himself. And the same goes for him, I deeply respect his faith and the way it makes him act in this world. Whatever one can say about the Church and its priests, bishops and Archbishops: This religion is very much alive here and gives many people solace and a center that is alive. Me, a man that has “followed his heart” most of his life feel quite at home among them, and the mutual respect and love for what we’re doing and the people we’re doing it with bridges the divide that I think is superficial. This whole initiative is about practicing the “compassionate way,” and the joy that practice brings however it is interpreted.
Russ got it going round about 6 weeks ago. He’s not only involved with Launchgarage, a successful Philippine accelerator but also with Lab.ph and the Roxas Kalaw Foundation who are both, in different ways, involved with SDG1 “Poverty Alleviation.” After seeing what I wrote about the last trip to the Philippines he said, “We have to talk!” And we have talked and are going to collaborate in many different ways so that what we pioneer in Sinagtala can become a initiative that can be easily replicated all over the Philippines.
