Our goal is simple: we have targeted a small group of 50-100 families with varying needs and we’re continuing to scaffold them over time, which I think is the secret to escaping the centrifugal force of gravitational poverty.

It’s not easy to do this, as you shape their lives at the same time. It’s not like a bread line or sign-up for benefits. We have about 25 who have been with us for more than 3 years, 5 for 4 years, and the rest in varying amounts.

We can study them with this method to get them to teach us about poverty and how the strange attractor of poverty works, as well as what we have to do to meet that force equally.

I’m not sure if we are succeeding. It’s very difficult, but through the years, the ups and downs of these people and those they bring to us, we are channeling scaffolding towards them.

Business wise, what I am doing each year, is putting more things in place (infrastructure) to train and equip these disadvantaged people, in large part without much education, to try to cope with increasing complexity.

We are gradually — albeit too slowly, but unless you just dump the people without capability and go hire those who have it (which aggravates the root cause) — sticking with them until they spin out, as some do into other jobs. We have several who have found good jobs and livelihoods after being on the street (not many, but a few). And the others continue to gather capability in ways in which we can scaffold.

Unfortunately, you have to deal with the floods, typhoons, health setbacks, funerals, births, and stuff along the way.

I encourage everyone to donate wherever their dollar goes the farthest. The government, in my view, is being disingenuous with what is going on. They are now saying in the provinces affected that it might take MONTHS for electricity to come back into service, and water is intermittent now at best, if at all. Imagine living like that as we have people doing right now.

So we are patiently accepting any donations you will send our way to continue to support these MyPALs and their families in the ways in which we can, to best help them.

We will graduate our first MyPAL (after 3 years) in travel and tourism and we’re hoping she can lead the new project starting next April as she will exchange work for her tuition/fees and support we have provided her over the last 3 years for our www.havemorefuninthephilippines.com project, which I hope to have in beta by next March/April when Gary becomes another guinea pig for the project.

Below are some pictures of our first spec house being built as well as the views from it.  We have hundreds of pictures from the very start of the building process and I am showing ones that capture some of the views.  The last picture is a bamboo house that was later destroyed by Typhoon Haiyan.

The Generati project started two years ago this December when Manya and James came for a hosted visit in order to begin to understand what we had to do to scale a hosting system, which millions of foreign visitors can take advantage of over time. This is the scaffolding @F-L-O-W that I have chosen because it brings in foreign dollars (leverage) and offers our hosts opportunities to meet foreigners in the process.

In order to do this, we have to put in place infrastructure, which is difficult with people who are “loose” in a culture which is loose. Sometimes I want to throw in the towel, but then again, that is part of the problem… Removing the scaffolding before it is frozen in place long enough to support the weight of change.

Infrastructure includes systems and standards, English training, computer training, training on etiquette, and a host of calendaring, and travel considerations for curb-to-curb service that foreigners will pay for in order to have a great experience.

www.itsmorefuninthephilippines.com was started by the government 2 years ago and I decided in my “spare” time to help create a parallel process which provides curb-to-curb service based on all the good/bad experiences I have had as a foreigner and how to avoid MOST of the problems and enjoy your visit, stay, or life using what the Philippines has to offer.

The reason I’m writing about this, is it takes time to do a project like this, not only for the infrastructure build out and standards, but for the leadership to come on board to do it, because believe me, I have several REGULAR JOBS, and I am not @F-L-O-W doing a lot of the details involved in the process of curb-to-curb.

However, I could NOT find another business model that will give us the leverage and compounding required to help these people long term learn to fish instead of just providing fish as we do in these kinds of climatic events. The turnaround for a lot of these people is years, and will be years for those who have suffered complete losses and partial losses as about 5 of our MyPALs have suffered. So it’s not just a donation here, or rice there. It’s a continual supply of funds and cash flow to help them remain out of the street or in destitution.

I hope that explains our project and why we continue to try to provide benefits that will help raise money for our projects with our MyPALs.

Yesterday, one of the babies got “sicker” and it required serious cash for them (which they don’t have, to keep the baby from going south). Who provides that? I did, with some of your help, send them money on the fly to give the baby a series of potent injections for a viral infection that had the baby in convulsions and more than likely was misdiagnosed a month ago when we treated for an ear infection, supposedly, and “teething pain” (OMG), the medical care in the provinces is not high quality!

Below are two pictures they sent to me of the Dipolog team, from left to right, Aira, Wen, Wen-baby, Kristina (team leader), I don’t know the other child. This was on Wen’s 21st birthday, and the day after she is rushing the baby in convulsions to the hospital. I attached the photo of the simple birthday they were having (as a result of our donations) for the family of 9 and friends. You can see it’s mostly rice and of course a big cake supplied.