Caba, PH – Garden helps grandchildren’s future – 14 Jun 2015

The RAB family take great pleasure helping raise their six grandchildren, ages one to eight years old. They take care of them in order to help their children seek employment opportunities away in Manila. Grandmother RAB babysits the grandchildren during the day while Mr. RAB is at work. The grandparents would not have it any other way because they want to help their children become financially established so that they can provide for their children.

By staying with the grandparents, the school age children are able to attend school without much difficulty. The school is walking distance, so the children do not have to worry about having enough money to pay a bus fare. With the combined household incomes, they are also able to pay all theirs bills and have enough to eat.

Grandfather RAB works as a local bus dispatcher in Baguio, which is a two hour bus ride from where they live in Caba.  This is a huge sacrifice for RAB as he only comes home every two weeks. He wishes he could be home more frequently, but travel costs are too expensive. He perseveres with this arrangement because he wants his grandchildren to have a good future.

The family recently joined the Food Always In The Home (FAITH) organic vegetable garden program that includes the Happy Shine Garden Shop team teaching them best practices for vegetable growing. By growing organic vegetables and using their home made compost, they are able to nourish the soil and continuously harvest vegetables from their garden. Tending to the faith garden is a family effort, and they enjoy working in the garden together. Whatever vegetables are left after feeding the family are sold to the local market.  This supplements the family income.

Thanks to the garden, the family does not spend most of their income on food like before. The children have also learned to eat more healthily. It used to be a challenge to feed them vegetables, but helping with the garden has given them the appetite to consume what they help produce. The RAB family income has grown by approximately 10% since they joined the FAITH garden program. They are now earning 7,000 pesos (US $155) per month, so they are able to save approximately 4,000 pesos (US $88) per month after paying living expenses.

The biggest challenge for the family is not being able to see grandfather RAB on a regular basis. The family is very close, and they are optimistic that this will soon change. During summer, when it gets very hot and humid and there is less water, it is difficult to take care of the garden. The family members walk back and forth, in the blazing heat, fetching water from a shared community water pump 100 meters from the garden.

The grandparents would like to see their beloved grandchildren finish college or attend vocational school. They also want to bequeath their home and garden to their children, so they want to improve their home so that they can leave behind a nice legacy.

They are also hopeful that their children’s income will improve, and the garden will provide a good supply of surplus vegetables for selling. This would allow the family to have more disposable income, which would enable Mr. RAB to be with his family more often.

The family has been considering investing in their own water system to make it easier to look after the garden during the dry summer. They believe any investment on the garden would pay off greatly because to them the garden symbolizes achieving family solidarity.