Friday, February 25, 2011

Ancop's Child Sponsorship Program

Since the start of 2010 to the present, Jun and I are the Ancop Coordinators for our cluster.  Ancop is the acronym for ANSwering the Cry Of the Poor and is founded by Couples for Christ to consolidate its local and global efforts in building the Church of the Poor to achieve total Christian liberation.  Sounds so high falluting.  In simple terms, it means helping to improve the lot of the less fortunate and the marginalized.

Ancop has been around for more than ten years already, it predates Gawad Kalinga, but it was relaunched on December 8, 2010.  It has five programs, namely; Education, Livelihood, Community Development, Health and Shelter.  For our sector, West C, we have a sixth program, Ancop Learning Center (a pre-school).

What I like about Ancop is its thrust on education.  The Child Sponsorship Program (under the Education program) is a child/youth sponsorship by a donor partner.  With the CSP, as it is commonly called, a child can realize his dream of a college education and hopefully a better life.  To become a donor, he doesn't have to fork out a big chunk of his savings.  For a minimum of P11,000/year or P30/day, he makes a lasting imprint on the life of the child.  


I believe that the best help one can give to the poor is through education.  Knowledge from continued education is something that a child can bring and use as an armor to life's many battles.  When a child has a college diploma tucked under his belt, he has better chances of landing a regular job thus breaking the notorious practice of hiring for contractual employment in the country.  Can you imagine the kind of future he will have when he has to find another job every five months?  Because he is always new in his job, he is perpetually a minimum wage earner living on a hand to mouth existence.

It is my fervent wish that this article will be able to touch your hearts, my dear readers.  If I will be able to convince one reader to become a donor, I say that all is not lost on mankind.  There is still hope for the poor.

Saturday, February 12, 2011

Connecting with Bloggers

When I was still studying Certified Blog Entrepreneur Program from the Ateneo, one of the requirements that I have to submit was to promote an event using the blog platform.  My classmates and I were given two weeks to run the campaign.  For the campaign to be successful, we have to network with other bloggers in the same category as you are in.  If you blog about music, then you have to solicit the help of the bloggers who also write about music.  I chose to promote the Legacy Run of the Couples for Christ West C as it was scheduled within the time frame that our Subject Matter Expert (SME) Janette Toral set.

For the Legacy Run promotion, I first contacted the event organizer, Bro. Ronnel de Ocampo.  After getting all the details from him, I wrote a blog post of the event and started promoting it using my Facebook and Twitter networks.  For my campaign to be successful, I started looking for bloggers who are members of the Couples for Christ community as the target market of the Legacy Run is very niche.  The run was not only a fun run but also a family day of the West C Sector.


Networking with CFC bloggers is not difficult.  There are no X-deals to be talked about nor monetary compensation.  The bloggers will do the post for the sake of brotherhood/sisterhood love and camaraderie.  To Sis. Cecille Ama and Sis. Sky Ortigas, thank you so much for the support.  I know you did it for the love of God and Couples for Christ.  Cheers and good luck to Couples for Christ.