Paella Party, Le Muy

On the 17th June the annual Paella Party was held at Margery's house outside Le Muy. About 50 people enjoyed a sunny afternoon and excellent paella in the garden. The event raised 860 euros for the work of the Philippine Self Help Foundation, a charity set up and run by Margery's son, Richard.

The Philippine Self Help Foundation

Richard Foster first visited the central Philippine island of Negros in January 1987. The Philippine Self Help Foundation came into being soon after. What was the impact of that first visit and how is the livelihood loan programme faring today?

How We Started

The PSHF came into being in January 1987, shortly after the fall of the Marcos dictatorship. The island of Negros in the Southern Visayas region was plunged into crisis when the price of sugar on the world market collapsed. The island's sugar workers were laid off in their thousands and their children went hungry. I remember walking through the paediatric wards of the provincial hospital and seeing the blank looks on the faces of third-degree malnourished children. I met one mother carrying her six-year-old boy; only he and his little sister had survived from a family of six children. A wall chart in the ward painted a picture of tragedy. In 1985, 600 children in that hospital alone had died from complications arising from malnutrition. I resolved at the time to do more than just give a donation to the hospital's medical prescription fund, so proceeded, there and then, to channel some loan funds through Dr Duenas, to assist the parents of two of the children in the paediatric ward.

Seventeen years on, the famine conditions that prevailed on the island of Negros are a distant memory but the PSHF remains with its mission to empower the poor with small business loan assistance. To date, the PSHF has helped over 1,000 families and communities in five provinces of the Philippines. With over 30% of Filipinos living in poverty, no welfare safety net and a deteriorating environment, the PSHF remains a lifeline of hope for numerous poor families in the communities we serve.

The PSHF is entirely supported by individual supporters and five church congregations including St John's church, Saint Raphaël, whose support goes back to the early days of the PSHF, outlined above. Donations from St John's have made a big difference in the lives of some very poor families. In 2002, funds from St. John's were used to provide a loan of 20,000 pesos (400 euros) to Joy and Loida Sarsis to expand their banana vending business. In 2003, further church funds enabled pre-school teacher, Magdalena Belandres, to re-stock her small shop after her husband died very suddenly, aged 40. In the same year, the PSHF used repayments from previous St. John's funded loans to pay for the medical needs of PSHF staff, the removal of an ovarian cyst and medication for a staff worker whose artificial eye was painful and bleeding inside.