MOST restores hope and dignity

DAVAO CITY , Philippines  -– Having a steady income was a struggle for 25-year-old Dennis Panay. A former construction worker living in Isla Verde, an impoverished community in the city, he could only rely on hard-hat jobs to come his way.

But last year, he took up a practical electricity course at the Mobile Out-of-School Training (MOST) program of Operation Blessing Foundation Philippines (OB), after which he began repairing his neighbors’ broken appliances. Soon after, he was making house calls around the city.

“Almost every day, I have a customer,” said Dennis. He fixes electric fans, stoves, flat irons, even washing machines, earning up to P500 on a single house call.

Profits from his appliance repair service helped Dennis buy more tools for his new trade. Last October, he was able to purchase a passenger pedicab, assuring him of another stable source of income. He dreams of setting up his own repair shop, and helps his siblings and relatives whenever financial problems arise in the family.

A small table and tools were all Ryan Intal needed to start his own cellphone repair business.

A month after graduating from MOST, Ryan got support from a churchmate to set up a small sidewalk shop near the city’s Ecoland bus terminal. Today the shop is abuzz with customers almost every day, and oftentimes his classmates at MOST help him with the repair orders.

“We’ve made very good use of what we’ve learned,” Ryan said.

The 22-year-old pastor’s son used to feel he couldn’t make it on his own. A slight handicap – a limp in his left leg caused by a vehicular accident – proved to be a setback in finding a job. But Ryan has found fulfillment and enhanced self-worth.

 “My parents are glad that I can now help with the family’s finances. It feels good to have done all this through hard work,” he shared. “I am so happy because Operation Blessing changed my life!”

Aside from cell phone repair and practical electricity, MOST also has courses on cosmetology, refrigeration and air-conditioning repair, and dressmaking.

Since it started in 2005, MOST has produced more than a thousand graduates from Metro Manila, Bulacan, Rizal, Cavite, Albay, Compostela Valley, Cebu and Davao, all of them grateful for the new trade skills they learned for free.

MOST is one of the programs of Operation Blessing Foundation Philippines, the humanitarian arm of the Christian Broadcasting Network Asia.