Category: Recipient Stories

Once she made the decision to attend ICM’s Transform program, Clementina never wanted to miss a lesson. She organized her life so that she would be able to attend the lessons and still have time to take care of household chores, her children and her disabled husband, Sulpicio. Clementina really enjoyed the livelihood lessons, particularly the...

While most of us take the gift of literacy for granted, it is shocking to learn that illiteracy affects nearly 17% of adults worldwide – the vast majority of them women, according to UNESCO. September 8, 2016, marks the 50th anniversary of International Literacy Day and aims to actively promote literacy as an instrument to...

For over 20 years, Conchita lived with a cyst on her neck that distrupted her sleep and caused discomfort. The local midwife in Conchita’s village warned her against overworking, which meant Conchita needed to pare back the hours she spent washing clothes to earn money. Forced to rely on her husband’s unstable fishing income to...

Dengue fever is a recurring problem in the Philippines as the country has one of the highest dengue infection rates in the Western Pacific region.  In 2015, the Philippines saw more than 100,000 cases recorded. Augustin, at just 12 years old, was one of them. Augustin was in desperate need of a blood transfusion of fresh frozen...

After leaving her abusive ex-husband, Ellen thought she’d have to raise her two young daughters alone. The future looked gloomy and hopeless. The reality of poverty is haunting. Although no longer living with her ex-husband, she still harbored an intense grudge against him. It seemed almost unimaginable to her that she would ever be able to...

Bringing up her four grandchildren with no money to provide for them has been enormously challenging for Teresita. Before undergoing ICM’s Transform program, Teresita felt powerless to change her circumstances and unable to move forward. Teresita’s son was imprisoned for being suspected of theft, leaving Teresita with the job of raising not only his children,...

Last November, Janice noticed her middle daughter Carla Mae’s mouth and eye were swelling. Lips that were just cracked a few days previously, were now swollen and blistered. The single mother of five was concerned, but searching for enough work to feed her family was a higher priority than solving what seemed a small medical...

“I’m tired of being a mother.” With five children at home and an unemployed, unmotivated husband, Cheryl spent most of her days desperately trying to find a way to feed her family of six. Selling oysters, when she could find them, was Cheryl’s only job, but most days, she found only the rising tide of...

Arlene worked at a vending stand and made US$3.33 a week. Her seasonal job, harvesting vegetables, occasionally brought in another US$6.50 a week. If employed, Arlene’s husband Arnel could earn up to US$8.30 a week, however his carpentry jobs were erratic. The parents of three teenagers were working hard, but money was always tight when...

Angel found herself alone in the world after her mother died in childbirth and her father felt unable to support her.  It wasn’t just the thought of caring for an infant that overwhelmed Angel’s birth father, it was the fact that Angel was born with a blocked (imperforate) opening to her anus that would require...