"They have nothing, but they gave us a smile"
Both of us (Christian & Michael) traveled to the Philippines for 15 days at the end of May 2019 to be inspired by this beautiful country and to explore a completely foreign land on our own with our two backpacks. During this time, we were able to support a children's charity in Manila with 15kg of clothes and visited the Smoky Mountains, where the poorest of the poor live in slums in Manila.
In the Smoky Mountains, countless children were playing around. Barefoot, dirty, and in some cases, very health-compromised. Black smoke from tires and wood rose up, and the ground was littered with garbage everywhere.
Every day, trucks deliver tons of garbage there, which is "processed" by the local people.A worker earns about $2 a day there! Everyone can live and work there, but not everyone survives, as the life expectancy is only 40 years!
Conditions there were absolutely unimaginable for us; especially, the people there have no fresh water and no electricity! Upon our arrival, we handed over many children's clothes as well as coloring pencils and books from Germany that we had collected within our circle of acquaintances.
The joy of the people there was immense; we rarely saw such happy children as these. They literally tore the clothes off our backs. Even our drone was an absolute eye-catcher....
It was an incredible trip that opened our eyes.
In conclusion, we handed over a small amount of money to the families there in the name of our company Myvial and were allowed to immortalize ourselves with a few moving photographs as a "thank you".
