Category: ICM Bases

In the time of COVID-19, have you ever gotten to a point when it seems all hope is lost? Even the best of us get discouraged, especially during the pandemic, when everything is so uncertain! “I always have trouble finding food,” Pastor David told us. “Sometimes I feel hopeless.” Pastor David is one of our...

In the era of contact lenses and eye surgeries, eye problems may seem like a thing of the past, but for those living in ultra-poverty, vision issues can be an insurmountable challenge. Loreto, a 51-year-old farmer in Dipolog, is the primary breadwinner for his family. He works hard to not only provide for his family’s...

  We often say that a savings group can act as a safety net for when its ultra-poor members are facing emergencies. Janice in Dipolog lived this out when she and her family found themselves living in a pigpen. When Janice first joined Transform in 2017, she wasn’t so sure about the livelihood lessons. Wives...

When Elizabeth and Mary Ann, both residents in Mindanao, joined Transform, back in February, they had no idea how much help it would be during this difficult year, even though the program was forced to stop halfway through because of the pandemic.   Elizabeth has a large family with thirteen children, their spouses, and eight...

In the midst of the hunger crisis during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Department of Health (DOH) partnered with International Care Ministries (ICM) to quickly deliver life-saving food relief to cure malnutrition in more than 30,000 children during the COVID-19 community quarantine. Since July, the DOH dispatched thousands of boxes of Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF) and...

“Almost all of the children here were crying because they didn’t have food. Some families are large and suffer from hunger,” Pastor Silin told ICM staff. She is one of our thousands of partner pastors living and working in ultra-poor communities all across the Philippines. She had been hosting a Transform program in a remote...

A partnership between International Care Ministries, De La Salle Medical & Health Sciences Institute, and the Canadian Government will boost hospital workers’ safety during the pandemic Healthcare workers bear a much greater risk of exposure to COVID-19, with 15% of all coronavirus cases in the Philippines being hospital or health care workers as of DOH’s...

International Care Ministries’ efforts to save the ultra-poor from hunger during COVID-19 quarantine   Hunger is a devastating by-product of the COVID-19 pandemic in the Philippines. With strict quarantine regulations in place since March 15, approximately 30 million Filipinos who live in poverty are struggling with hunger.    International Care Ministries (ICM), a Filipino NGO,...

Janeth is 29 years old and she lives in a bamboo house in a mountainous region in Dipolog. She is a mother of three children, and her husband works as a rubber tree farmer. His job brings in approximately PHP17 per person per day; that’s less than HK$3 or 30 US cents. Thinking that Transform...

Widowed and living with her two children and three grandchildren, Dolores had every excuse to lose hope. Only she and her son had jobs, and even with their combined income, they only had PHP19 (USD 0.40) a day per person to cover their daily expenses. But instead of faltering, she persevered and now her story...