Category: Programs

Despite living in a small bamboo shack with no electricity or bathroom, Grace, 37, looks forward to the future. She has just completed ICM’s Transform program, where she learned how to use resources that are close at hand to feed and take care of her family. One of these resources is her humble garden. Okra...

Thirty-four year old Rosalie has worked hard her whole life to provide for her family. She currently lives without electricity in a house made of bamboo and corrugated iron with her husband and four-year-old son. They rent this small house for P700 / HK$125 / US$16/ AU$20 every month. Rosalie’s father died when she was...

Meriam, 23, is married to Volter, a passenger motorbike driver. Meriam stays at home and looks after the couple’s two young daughters, Angel and Stephany, while Volter works hard to provide for his family. However the irregular income of a driver is barely enough for them to survive. They live in a coastal village with...

by: Deborah Foo The establishment of Capital One Philippines Support Services Corporation’s (COPSSC) partnership with ICM was highlighted through the launch of six Transform and two Jumpstart communities in the province of Bohol on the 6th and 7th of July 2015. The theme of the event was titled “Together bringing hope, Providing help, Creating change” which emphasized the partnership in...

Life is extremely hard for women living in desperate poverty. Things most people can take for granted – providing regular meals, keeping homes safe, making sure children go to school – are often unachievable when a family of five lives on less than US$2.00 per day. Red Rope was born out of a vision to empower...

  Thanks to ICM’s Transform program, Abad Maria and Pejana’s green thumbs are helping to feed their families. ABAD MARIA Fourteen years ago, Abad Maria took her three children and left her alcoholic husband. Now 47 years old, Abad lives with her children, one son-in-law and her three-year-old grandson in a small house built of...

The weekend of May 13-16, several visitors attended an ICM 101 trip in Dipolog to learn more about ICM’s poverty reduction model. Attendees fell into different age, gender, cultural and geographic segments. Here are two written reflections and one photographic impression of the weekend.   Ryan’s recollections For most of my time on this earth...

By Kim Thomson, ICM Volunteer All his life, five year old Santino Elisalde has watched his fisherman father at work each day.  Santino lives with his parents and six siblings in a two room shack which hovers above the sea water at high tide. During low tide, the home is surrounded by residual rubbish and...

When a fire destroyed Cristine’s flimsy house late last year, she was grateful that no one in her family was killed. While Christine, her husband Raffy and their two children were unharmed, they were homeless. Before the fire, life was struggle for the Barbon family. Raffy worked as an occasional farm labourer and earned a...

Photographs courtesy of ESF South Island School The students at Hong Kong’s ESF South Island School (SIS) jumped their way into the Guinness Book of World Records on 24 March, 2015. At 10.05am precisely, 1,449 members of the SIS community did star jumps for two minutes, breaking the world record for “Most People Simultaneously Doing...