Video Diary: Day 6

Video Diary: Day 6 from ISOiloilo on Vimeo.

Urban Poor: Editor's Note

For our journey to meet Iloilo's urban poor, we split up into three groups that would go to different sites accompanied by representatives from KADAMAY. At the end of our three separate journeys, we met up at a central point to discuss all that we had seen and experienced. The three articles that follow are the reports from the leaders of the three groups who were instructed to conduct interviews with members of the community at their respective sites.

Session 5.1: The Urban Poor of Iloilo : North Baluarte & the Sooc Project 5 Site

Written by Sheril A. Bustaman 

Photographs by Joyce Ng and Jonathan Lim

     Iloilo is a vibrant thriving city that is developing at its own pace. Hidden within the developing city however are squatter areas and project sites populated by the urban poor. On the sixth day of our journey, the travellers split into three different groups to visit the places where the urban poor lived and worked. This article is about two such areas: North Baluarte and the Sooc Project Site.

Session 5.2: The Cast outs of Iloilo City

Written by Traceline Choo

Photographs by Melissa Chia

     Jaro is one of the areas where relocation sites in Iloilo city are located. Relocation sites are places where citizens are placed when their houses are demolished for urban development purposes by the government. But, as organizations like Kadamay would agree, these citizens are not given attention by the government and most of them are facing financial problems and lack access to clean water. 

The San Isidro Jaro relocation

Session 5.3: Down in the Dumps

Written by Sarah Chong

Photographs by Sarah Chong

     As Iloilo city continues to develop into a  beautiful city, urban poor communities are caught in the middle of things-often, they are displaced and relocated by the urban planning efforts of the local authorities. With the assistance of Kadamay, our group of 10 were able to take a walk through the urban poor area of the dumpsite and slums in Calajunan, Mandurriao and Lapuz Norte, Lapuz respectively.

What lies behind the Esplanade

Written by Zherluck Shaen Rodriguez
Photographs by Vince Cheong

   Teamed up with an organization called Kadamay, the Malaysian travelers along with us student guides went to see different urban poor communities. I have never been to an urban poor community before, and so I didn’t know what I was going to experience. Led by Tracey, we were assigned to see the relocation sites. 

    As an unaware citizen of the Philippines, I was really shocked when I saw the state of the people who are relocated in the area. The local authorities have been telling us that "everything is fine", do not worry about the people who are relocated because they are in "good condition", but what I saw was the total opposite.

The people we don't see

A Possible Dream

Written by Peter Glenn Rapiz

Photographs by Vince Cheong

     Every human being has the tendency to live within a four-walled boundary keeping in mind a fairy-tale fantasy of becoming the next Bill Gates or maybe the future Mark Zuckerberg. Means, method and money have become the mirrors of the famous phrase behind the theory of evolution – survival of the fittest.

    The moment a ray of light strikes the eyes of every individual, there is no escape from the upfront revelation of a colorful yet undeniable photograph of reality. 

     The world is bombarded with issues, be it social, economic, political, etc., which tend to increase the imbalance of the system of the major stakeholders of the universe – the people. Specifically, we cannot deny the fact that the most pressing issue of today is poverty within a majority of nations.

   Poverty is the core of a pessimistic view relative to security, stability and predictability of the continuous availability of the basic needs in order to survive. But it varies among nations due to the uniqueness of cultures, backgrounds, traditions and even geography. But can it be possible to achieve a world without poverty? Idealism and positivism would say nothing is impossible but when confronted with a reality, the answer would probably be hanging in between the lines.