Thanks to crowd funding, there’s now a new way for Filipino-Americans to help the motherland aside from remittances and balikbayan boxes of imported goods.
With PhilAmTHropy (PATH), a California-based crowd funding site dedicated to Filipino projects, Filipinos living abroad can now help projects in the Philippines get off the ground.
Around 11 million Filipinos are working abroad and they generate some $20 billion in remittances, PATH said on its website. That money, though, often only goes to an Overseas Filipino Worker’s family and to certain charities in case disasters strike.
“Through PhilAmTHropy, we hope to provide a community that will encourage and support Filipino projects. PATH believes that philanthropy is not quite the same as charity. Charity is usually associated with writing checks, whereas philanthropy is providing someone with the tools on ‘how to fish’,” PATH said.
The site allows project proponents–PATH calls them Philippine Ambassadors–to pitch their project ideas to “PhilAmTHropists” on the website. Supporters can pledge from just a couple of dollars to hundreds of dollars to help get a project started.
“Together, we can get more innovative projects done sooner if we all chip in. It’s a new kind of People Power,” PATH said.
Among the projects already funded through the website are buying precription lenses for 500 schoolchildren in the Philippines, helping a custom jeweler put up her mother-of-pearl jewelry business, and helping the Transparency and Accountability Network hold a voter’s empowerment workshop in Abra province, an election hot spot.
Although the concept of crowd funding isn’t new, having a crowd funding platform dedicated to harnessing the love for country in the Filipino diaspora to help projects that are either home-grown or close to the Filipino’s heart is.
An important note to Filipinos abroad: We will still also appreciate balikbayan boxes, though.
—
Photo: Screenshot from the PhilAmTHropy website
