In the wake of Supertyphoon Yolanda’s unprecedented fury two years ago, well-meaning people rushed to the stricken province of Tacloban to extend assistance.
They not only provided food, clothing and temporary housing but, more importantly, the warmth of humanity’s kinship to get them through that difficult time.
Many of these benevolent gestures went unnoticed because, for these caring souls, helping their fellow men is the reward itself.
Such was the case for Springboard Foundation, which is always ready to extend any assistance it could at a moment’s notice.
“Today, we are going to Baseco in Tondo to help those damaged by flooding,” Springboard Foundation Chairman Sarah McLeod said of the foundation she helped establish 12 years ago.
According to McLeod, the secret of the foundation’s success in convincing donors is in the fact that they have proven themselves to be aboveboard in handling large amount of donations that others would have been tempted to keep for themselves.
They are regularly audited by SyCip Gorres Velayo and Co., one of the country’s leading and most respected auditing firms.
How it all started
“We started as early as 2000. Originally we thought about supporting one little school, near Merville Subdivision, that is how it started,” McLeod shared during the BusinessMirror interview in her office in Makati City, where she is a top executive of a business-process outsourcing company.
McLeod said the foundation’s original founder, Annette Helbig, a poet, thought of producing a book of poems that she could sell to raise fund to help the Merville school.
“By the time we have written the book, had it printed and raised the fund, the little school had closed,” she said.
Stuck with the money from the book, they established Springboard Foundation with the idea that its name would suggest a springboard for the future.
Still, they thought that children and nobody but children should benefit from their efforts, especially in their education. But, at the same time, they also want to extend assistance to sick children, while also providing family wellness programs.
“Anything to do with children, we can support, from babies to college,” McLeod said.
Earning trust and credibility
She distinguishes her foundation from others by calling it a “donee foundation,” where they are provided funding by donors, whether individuals or business firms, and then run a particular project where they have the necessary expertise.
Springboard Foundation is about to refurbish the Dr. Jose Fabella Memorial Hospital, the hospital for newborn babies in Santa Cruz, Manila.
“We have some money from a company. We put together the project and then we manage the project until it is finished. They trust us to do that for them. I do not know if you have been to Fabella. They have 600 newborn babies a day,” McLeod explained with excitement.
The extent of trust that donors has placed on them has led to over 300 charity works over the years, including the construction of hospitals, building of fishing boats, supporting of livelihood projects, and constantly providing relief assistance to typhoon victims.
“It is a never-ending task. We live in a country where around the next corner, disaster is going to happen,” McLeod said.
She let on that they are presently working on a post-Yolanda project where they are assisting neighboring island-communities whose residents lost everything.
“We focus on the charity in Tacloban, the Children of Hope, and we worked with Gawad Kalinga,” she revealed, adding that Springboard Foundation is not just about expatriates because there are also Filipino volunteers.
McLeod said there are many “expats” who join them for two or three year stints “to make sure that if they donate, they donate it to somebody that they trust.”
“After Yolanda, we got millions of pesos from people that used to live here,” McLeod said.
From the €50,000 they raised through foreign donors, they were able to build 600 houses and 300 fishing boats, while also funding a livelihood project and giving families a bag of vegetable seeds in Tacloban.
“We feed them and told them how to build and how to replant. They are looking for something sustainable,” she said, adding that some expert volunteers would come along to teach gardening techniques to residents.
What her foundation does, since many of them do not know anybody from Tacloban or Bantayan Island, is to work on the ground with the community and the Department of Social Welfare and Development.
Next month Springboard Foundation is taking students from the British School in Manila to its various projects in Daan Bantayan, Northern Cebu and Tacloban.
“We are taking some of the students and teachers down to Tacloban to go and visit the families and to see the boats and show where their donations went,” McLeod said.
Unlike when they started calling donors by telephone some 10 year ago, today McLeod accesses the social media for donations.
During the interview, McLeod said a charity, the Philippine Christian Foundation that runs a school-feeding program in Binondo called, “because obviously it’s not very pretty there,” noting the incessant rains and the floods.
They requested for towels, blankets, clothing, and food that can easily be eaten when somebody loses a house.
The value of education
Born in Singapore, McLeod was raised in the United Kingdom (UK). She claims that although she is not rich, she is well taken care of.
She said that in the UK, citizens have pensions and everything is in order.
“But when you come here, you see the disparity between the rich and the poor. Sometimes it is just because they did not have the chance. So, if you can give someone the chance, 99 times out of 100 they will never let you down,” McLeod said.
McLeod came to the Philippines 18 years ago as head of the Asian Student Christian Foundation, the first British foundation set up here for children. They have 47 children under stewardship, living in Kasiglahan Village, Rizal, all of whom have scholarship programs.
In Taytay, Rizal, McLeod said the foundation provides financial assistance to Sienna College, run by nuns, where they teach classes during daytime for paying students and continue to teach at night, for free, to scholars.
McLeod said the students come from areas where they could not afford to go to high school.
“We are lucky enough that we can work with them. We can raise the funds to actually support what they do on the ground,” she said.
McLeod firmly believes in education, believing that it is the way to lift families out of poverty.
“So, everything that we do is to really try and educate the families. Giving a child an education is really the key,” she said.
McLeod is amazed at how education is taken seriously, even by those living in impoverished communities.
“You give a child an education in the Philippines and they just take it even if they live in a rubbish dump. Even if in the morning they have to scavenge, they will go to school in the afternoon. And that work is so hard,” McLeod said.
Underneath that umbrella of their foundation, they have a school called “cashew.” She also does a lot of work in the Payatas garbage dumps, where their foundation is supporting the construction of a medical center.
‘That said it all’
She recalled a time, six years ago, when a dam in San Jose, Bulacan, overflowed with homes and people along the riverbank vanishing.
In the midst of all the misery, McLeod said a man came along three days later to help them build a well. She said the man’s small home was bereft of everything, but since it was October, the man found a Christmas tree which he put up.
“So he has nothing in his house. Nothing. But he has one Christmas tree with a star and he just said, ‘we have to have something to look forward to,’” McLeod said.
It struck her like thunderbolt. “We need to have something to look forward to. I think that is something. For me, that said it all,” McLeod said.
Knowing how McLeod contributes much of herself to her charity, it makes one believe in humanity where other nameless people give what they can afford to help the less fortunate.