fORAchaNGE: Building HOMES not just Houses.

As I continue to grow my network attending all possible events I can cover for my online magazine, I keep on asking other bloggers to include me if there will be events I didn’t get invited to. One of them is Flow Galindez whom I occasionally bump with in some blogger events. I do remember asking him several times and although he would gracefully say yes, I didn’t really get invited. When I keep on pressing him to include me in his guest list, he asked me: “Okay ka ba sa charity kasi puro ganun ang event ko.” I immediately said yes. Of course I love to do charity works.

But I think he didn’t take it seriously at that time until I asked him again when we get a chance to meet up again in another blogger event. He finally invited me to join him in his charity event. Without even checking first my schedule, I said yes. And thank God I have a free time for the date he mentioned.

Comes November 13, Saturday. Although I was too tired and puyat covering lots of events that week and only managed to sleep for an hour, I still feel excited to try building houses for Habitat for Humanity Philippines. It was originally scheduled at Calauan, Laguna but was moved to Pasig instead. I am not really a morning person and a 7:00 AM call time is not a good idea. But since this is a charity event, I am happy to do it anyways.

I arrived at our meeting place at 7:15AM. Yes, I was late because although Flow woke me up at 5:00AM (I asked him too since I don’t have an alarm clock and that really doesn’t work for me. Hehehehe.) by calling me up, I still fell asleep and woke up again before 6:00AM. But I was really not late because Flow came in around 8AM! Hahahahaha. For this volunteer work, only Flow, Sai Saison and I are the one free for this event. It would have been fun to have many bloggers that day but according to Flow, it’s better than having more people “na maarte at magrereklamo lang” in the end.

There I met Kristine Gonzalez and Gladys Santos-Medina patiently waiting for us at Starbucks Silver City. There goes the usual chit chat like what exactly is a blogger and how that works. It’s always the same when you attend a blogger event.

I think we arrived at Pasig around 9:00 AM. For that day, I never looked at my watch to check the time. I was busy enjoying everything that is happening that day. We get some lectures on how Habitat for Humanity works, got introduced to the engineer in-charge, meet the other volunteers that day and the construction workers, and some of the beneficiaries of the houses we will build.

We were given gloves and helmet for protection. And I feel ashamed because when Flow told me to wear comfy clothes and pants, I changed it to shorts not knowing it’s not allowed in the construction site. But I was given the go signal since it was my first time. Sorry about that.

Although I am not really allowed to carry heavy stuff, I don’t want to disappoint Flow and the rest so I just obliged. We carried sacks of sands, shovel it, pump it, and build hollow blocks out of it! The latter part was the one I enjoyed the most. I only managed to create 2 big and 3 small hallow blocks but with no error at all! I think that will be my alternative business. Hahahahahaha.

We finished work at 12 Noon. I was actually expecting it will be finish by 5:00 PM. It was tiring. But I feel good. It was my first time to build a house. I remember asking myself before if I can get a chance to build something that I can proudly say I did that. And this is it. But the better thing about this is that I didn’t just build a house, I also built a home because after the experience, I feel really happy deep inside. There was this fulfillment and the eagerness to do it again. And it’s no longer just to experience it but because you wanna see its finish product and how much happiness it could bring to the beneficiary of that house.

And so, we will do this again on the 27^th, this time with more fellow bloggers. I really hope they do try this out. Try it first for experience. Get out of their comfort zone. Charity is not all fun because it do requires the dirty works some time. Literally. But at the end of the day, I am sure you will realize something. Yes, it’s tiring, and yes, there will be complaints, but eventually there will be smile on your faces once you get to realize why you’re doing it.

And that I guess makes Flow realize that I am not like any other bloggers out there. He admits that he thought I am only interested in parties, launchings and the likes. Well, at least I proved him wrong. And I am happy he gives me the chance to prove it.

Blogger event is not always about parties and freebies. Let’s do some charity once in our life. For a change.