BDO donates multi-purpose hall for Navotas flood victims

MANILA, Philippines - Banco de Oro Foundation is donating a P400,000 for a 60-square-meter multi-purpose hall (MPH) in a relocation site for flood victims built by Habitat for Humanity as an aftermath of typhoon Ondoy, which left thousands of people homeless from flood water.

The memorandum of agreement on this MPH initiative was recently signed at the BDO Corporate Center in Makati by Habitat for Humanity Foundation of the Philippines president Charlito Ayco and BDO Foundation president Maureen Abelardo with BDO vice chairman and foundation trustee Corazon de la Paz-Bernardo, Jesus Tirona, BDO adviser to the board of directors and foundation frustee, and Yvonne Lih, chief finance officer of Habitat.

The MPH can also double up as a livelihood center, creativity and social hall for the current 100 “homeowners” of the Habitat for Humanity community in Barangay Tanza, Navotas. It was also built complete with toilets, a mini kitchen and storage room, and is called the BDO Volunteers MPH because the P400,000 came from the donations of employees, Abelardo said. The community, considered as a permanent resettlement for flood victims, has a holding capacity of 500 houses (of 20 square meters) for relocatees of the usually- flooded areas of Malabon and Navotas.

BDO Foundation was among those that responded to the invitation last November of shipping heiress Doris Magsaysay-Ho, who asked her friends, relatives, and heads of local and foreign conglomerates close to her not to give her gifts on her 60th birthday but instead help raise funds for the construction of houses for the poor in the Habitat for Humanity project sites.   Her goal was to raise funds for 60 houses at P100,000 each, but with P16 million and some donations for a school and day care center, Ho said she would be able to build more than 100 houses as she was able to raise on her birthday alone some P16 million, including actual projects like the BDO MPH.

The MPH is the second volunteer project of the three-year-old BDO Foundation (from volunteer funds of its 20,000 employees nationwide). The first project, which was formally turned over to Makati two years ago, was a housing project in San Jose del Monte in Bulacan for the homeless people of Makati (after Ondoy) in collaboration with the Gawad Kalinga Foundation, another volunteer home builder group.

Abelardo said BDO Foundation is also now aggressively looking at possible sites to build houses for the rehabilitation and resettlement of flood victims in Cagayan de Oro and Iligan. Of the numerous projects of BDO Foundation, 80 percent of the funds come from the bank itself and the others from local and foreign partners, clients, friends, and volunteers.

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