On the Feast of Our Lady of Montserrat: Summer Outreach in Carbon, Cebu

This coming first Saturday of May, we will be on our third weekend of mural painting and outreach work in Brgy. Ermita's daycare center and its Sangguniang Kabataan office, here in Cebu City's Carbon district. According to the locals, Carbon, where Cebu's biggest wet market is situated, is known as a notorious place where brigands i.e. snatchers, slashers, etc. are said to reside. All of us from Banilad Study Center's group of student and young professional volunteers have always been reminded to keep careful watch over our belongings and to make sure that we do not wear any jewelry when we walk further inside the narrow and winding streets and alleys, heading towards the seacoast, literally under an area of the long bridge of the South Road Properties (SRP) owned by SM Prime Holdings, which is where our beneficiaries live. But so far, all we are receiving from the barangay residents here are nothing but kind attention and gratitude for our presence.
Last April 27, the feast of Our Lady of Montserrat and the anniversary of St. Josemaria Escriva's cure from diabetes, we pushed through with our Medical Mission in this same barangay, graced by three doctors from a well-known local hospital here, together with student medical volunteers from the Cebu Institute of Medicine, Velez College and Cebu Doctor's University. We gave the local residents health education classes which dwelt on lowering blood pressure and how to take care of infants and pregnant women. Our volunteer nurses took the blood pressure of the old and young residents of the barangay, and we also gave out free medicines and vitamins, courtesy of our friends from several pharmaceutical companies here. Our health classes were held right in front of the barangay's chapel dedicated to San Juan Bautista, and because of the sun's rays directly hitting the entrance of the chapel, we had to fix the monobloc chairs along the street instead!

We are grateful for all the college and young professional volunteers who took time to be with us the whole day: Liz, Joan, Vam, Dinky, Mar, Nikki, Sophie, Meryl, Hyacinth, Angel, April, Kayle and Kim, plus our youngest volunteers, high schoolers Nicole and Francine. We hope to finish with the mural of the daycare center halfway through this month of May.

Maybe the next project we can conduct in this barangay would be on basic hygiene and nutrition, plus how to care for and conserve the environment. It beats me to see how the kids love to swim in the sea, along with all the trash Cebu can produce! We hope to see this major project through one day.