MANILA, Philippines – “Being a nurse in the US is no joke,” says Dita Guevara, a Filipino nurse at the Valley Medical Center in California.
Despite the hefty pay, she deals with stressful workload, excessive paperwork and disagreeable patients.
“The last thing on your mind is rest,” says Dita, who like thousands of other Filipino nurses now staffed in American hospitals, immigrated to the US in search of a better life.
Still, despite the inconveniences, Dita did not have any second thoughts when a group of nurses from North California asked her to work for at least an extra day a month and donate her earnings to build houses for the poor in the Philippines through Gawad Kalinga (GK).
“I’ve been blessed and I want to share my blessings with the poor in my country. It’s a sacrifice that I am willing to make to reach out to the poor in my country,” says Dita.
For the past year and a half, Filipino nurse Beth Millares has been leading and closely coordinating with the Daring Dozen, a group of Filipino nurses who work extra hours to fund a GK village in the Philippines.
They have saved enough and are ready to build a GK village soon.
But more than just donating funds, they are also very active in the health arm of GK, Gawad Kalusugan.
The nurses rotate in going home every January or June to immerse in a GK community, teaching the health workers and the beneficiaries themselves basic and preventive health care management.
Beth is a nurse manager at the Santa Clara Medical Center in San Jose, California and specializes in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU)/Critical Care Unit (CCU) and phone advice nursing.
A graduate of the St. Luke’s School of Nursing, Quezon City batch 1974, she moved to the US to gain the professional, economic and social advantages that were not available in the Philippines.
After living a blessed life, Beth and husband Joe decided to do their share to uplift the lives of the poor Filipinos. And they found the perfect vehicle in GK.
Beth and Joe are part of the top leadership of GK in the US and have personally sponsored a village in Batangas and helped spawn other village sponsorships.
Mothers, babies in poor communities
Beth said she could not forget the sight of a pale and thin mother who just gave birth to twins and was staying in a dilapidated nipa hut in Batangas when she first visited the area and where a GK village would be constructed.
The young mother was carrying the oldest baby in her arms but her other child was lying on the ground with only a tattered cloth for a blanket. She wept at the sorry sight of the mother and babies.
Beth thought the situation was a far cry from the indigent mothers who have just given birth and although poor, are well taken care of in the US.
“In the Sta. Clara hospital, we serve illegal immigrants, indigents, those who have no insurance and can’t afford health care services, but the treatment is not like we saw there. Those who just gave birth in our hospital are given warm apple juice, soft bed, gifts. Friends and family are all around and the room is painted and cheery and both the mother and child are taken care of. It’s very different from the Philippines,” says Beth.
Since that incident in Batangas, she resolved that when she goes back to the US, she would enlist nurses to work extra hours, pool their resources to help give the poor a better life – a decent home to start with.
Dita, who is very involved now in the activities of the Daring Dozen, said what is beautiful in their group is that they no longer just donate money but they go out of their way to be involved with the lives of the beneficiaries, particularly in the health aspect.
“We want to empower the beneficiaries first and foremost and teach the mothers in the village preventive health and basic healthcare. We want to teach mothers to create their own medical record, know how to take blood pressure and basic health care procedures. We want to connect them to Gawad Kalusugan,” says Dita.
“We are taking care of Americans bakit hindi natin alagaan ang Filipino,” says Dita.
They vowed to get more members in their group not just to donate their money but their time and love, and realize that even ordinary nurses like them in the US can do extraordinary things for the poor. Their goal is to keep on inspiring their fellow Filipinos in the US not to forget about caring for the poor.