Women empowerment has become the core of the project and despite the distance, from all across ASEAN countries, the team managed to pull through multiple trainings dedicated to their angels – the women of Oriental Mindoro

Let’s share a little bit about your volunteering project. Can you describe your experience in one word or one sentence? 

A roller coaster ride! Yeap, that’s the best description we could go for, to describe this programme - Empowering Youth Across ASEAN (EYAA). The past six months have been teaching us tons including perseverance, team synergy, self-discipline among other things. Participating and committing to continue with the programme is a challenge on its own as every delegate - the Youth Volunteer knows how many times it has been postponed. However, through strong determination and great passion to empower the community, we - KEEP HOPE ALIVE come together, staying grounded for one another till the last day of the implementation process. Together, we’ve gone through troubles and tribulations throughout executing the projects. 

Sounds like a very challenging project! What is your project’s motivation to overcome difficulties? 

Our beautiful angels - the women of Oriental Mindoro, they are our strengths, our sole purpose, which becomes a huge motivational drive for us all to complete the project, despite needing to force ourselves to reorganise our chaotic life, and despite losing manpower throughout the journey. Again, here, we - the Youth Volunteers, come together in solidarity to contribute positively to the community. We could not deny that it has been a rough journey as holding this virtually means that we need to balance out our task along with the rest of our commitments; work, studies, you name it. But these angels of ours, remind us constantly of why we’re starting this journey. Reminds us of our Day 1. 

Can you all tell us about the project’s implementation?   

Women empowerment has become the core of our project, and we couldn’t be more grateful to be part of this journey, alongside our dearest CSO. Despite the distance, from all across ASEAN countries, we managed to pull through multiple trainings dedicated to our angels for the past months, and with God’s grace, we also managed to build the livelihood centre for our one and only angels - the women of Oriental Mindoro. We believe in their warmth, kindness, and especially their outstanding talents in producing goods. The efforts made throughout our journey is solely to see them fly high, and to keep on expanding their wings through their talents. We believe, with facilitation and training, they could achieve more. And so we did. The reason we're here. 

Great Team!  To wrap up, please share your thoughts about this experience with us. 

We, from the deepest of our hearts, couldn’t be more thankful and grateful to have impacted around 11,450 individuals, inclusive of the community of Oriental Mindoro, partners, stakeholders and also fellow volunteers throughout this wonderful ride. 

Seeing the significant and pivotal change we made, with God’s grace, may we always be able to KEEP HOPE ALIVE.