Clean and green: Hands On Manila represents the Philippines at global Good Deeds Day
MANILA, Philippines — Good Deeds Day (GDD) is a global event that encourages people from all over the world to do good deeds for one day. Its mission is to demonstrate how simple, genuine acts of kindness can be carried out by ordinary people. Hands On Manila (HOM) is GDD's official partner in the Philippines.
To celebrate GDD 2023, HOM concluded their month-long volunteer activity titled “Clean & Green with Hands On Manila" last April 29 at C.P. Sta. Teresa Elementary School in Taguig City. With the help of 4,774 hardworking volunteers who rendered 9,548 volunteer hours, they collected 422 liters of plastic trash to recycle within the vicinity of Pateros and Taguig City. 200 plastic bottles were painted and repurposed as pencil holders that benefited 15,586 students in five partner public schools.
HOM also participated in a joint Asian initiative through PIRIKA – a trash pickup app developed by HOM’s affiliate partner Hands On Tokyo. This aims to raise awareness about the mounting trash problem in our local communities. Participating schools, organizations and individual volunteers can collect trash and share photos of trash pick up in the app. All participants are able to pin the location of the activity on the spot, collect data, and see their contribution levels and impact. HOM worked with four other affiliates in the region located in Hong Kong, India, Japan and Singapore for the entire month of April 2023.
Through the generosity of our HOM donors, our partner schools now have additional trash collection equipment to support their existing materials recovery facility (MRF) program.
Those that benefited from this program were:
- C.P. Sta. Teresa Elementary School
- Silangan Elementary School
- Palar Integrated School
- Capt. H. Francisco Elementary School-Annex
- Sto. Rosario Elementary School
Hands On Manila Volunteer Arvie Abueva shared: “It’s always good to see how we are now working to save our planet and lessen the plastic waste by making plastics re-usable. As an advocate of the environment, my heart is overwhelmed and full of joy that we are now one step forward in doing voluntary work to save the planet. This will be beneficial to both ourselves and to future generations.”
Clean and Green with Hands On Manila’s sponsors were Taters, McDonald’s Philippines, Max’s Restaurant Concepcion Industrial Corporation and other generous individual volunteers.
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