Watch our CEO David Sutherland interviewed by Michelle Ong on ABS-CBN News Channel‘s Market Edge. David talked about the effects of the pandemic on the people living in ultra-poverty and how ICM is helping them get through these tough times.
David brought up the Sentinel program. Our “sentinels” are hundreds of partner pastors, community leaders, and ICM staff scattered across the provinces where ICM is found. ICM has been regularly checking in on them with a short survey to find out the news from the people who actually live in the communities. We found out that the ultra-poor have a consistently difficult time earning money because of the lockdowns. All the sacrifices they had to make because they didn’t have enough money for food.
This brought the discussion to ICM’s COVID-19 relief effort. ICM has distributed 14 million meals to over a million families and vegetable seeds to plant.
Since this is Market Edge, the talk veered to the current economic crisis the world is going through right now. Mimi asked David about how the COVID-19 pandemic affected fund-raising in the past year and he gladly shared that giving actually went up. ICM has been around for more than 25 years and has weathered a few economic crises before, when the giving went up before going down. David could see some challenges ahead. Still, David believes that these are not permanent setbacks and poverty alleviation will be able to get back on track.
In the meantime, there is still plenty of work ahead on the horizon for ICM, so we’ll keep on moving forward!
