At BPO Heroes we work to improve the lives of others. We save the business worlds of our clients, we create a productive and supportive working environment for our staff and we are honoured to say that we are working with the Purple Centers Foundation (PCF) to help them improve the quality of life for the poorest communities in the Philippines.
The Purple Centers Foundation is a nonprofit organisation working with families in the garbage dumpsite and cemetery communities of the Philippines. They are headquartered in Tondo, Manila, and have centres in the various communities in which they we work. PCF offers holistic, integrated services to inspire and enable children to persevere through hardship, focus on their studies and experience a meaningful education and childhood.
PCF has been in the hearts of our Founder and management team since 2014. When BPO Heroes was founded it was an obvious transition decision to support PCF with their comprehensive approach to combat the effects of poverty for the poorest of poor and provide opportunities for the children to break the cycle.
In addition to our corporate support program for PCF, BPO Heroes has committed to donate a minimum of 10% from each Starter Pack sold to PCF.
PCF provides a number of programs across Child and Family Development, Education, Emergency and Relief, and Health & Nutrition. Here are a couple:
Nutrition
PCF helps address students’ health and nutrition needs through feeding programs, health checkups, and medical services.
Their health program is focused on preventing and addressing malnutrition among students and their families. The project cycle has three phases of implementation:
Phase 1: Identification of Malnutrition Cases. The first phase of the project is focused on the collection and analyses of data gathered from students who were underweight during the previous school year and upon registration for the new school year. Based on this list, our Purple Center nurses conduct weekly home visits to the most serious case to assess the families needs, deliver healthy food supplements based on household size, and monitor the body mass index (height and weight) of all household members. Food supplementation is a promoter, preventive and rehabilitative intervention to provide the much-needed calories and protein, vitamins and minerals to those whose weights are below normal. Based on the initial data, household profiles are developed.
Phase 2: Getting Healthy. Social, health and medical interventions are carried out based on the household profiles and health screening of family members. This includes deworming, family health screening, diagnostic tests as-needed and treatment of all medical conditions in the family.
Phase 3: Staying Healthy. As families get healthy, they are learn how to take better care of their health and cook nutritious, affordable low-budget meals through our community kitchen approach. The community kitchen approach, conducted at the Purple Centers in Tondo, will improve their knowledge, perceptions and practices related to nutrition, food preparation, menu planning, cooking and other topics to raise the family value of healthy and nutrition.
The program aims for earlier identification of health issues and more holistic treatment of malnutrition by involving social work and education staff while the nurses shift to more home and community-based approaches. Supporting the health and nutrition of students contributes to the learning potential and performance of students in the various PCF educational program.
Disaster Relief
The Philippines is located in the “ring of fire,” prone to earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, typhoons, and monsoons. The conditions of the communities PCF serve are vulnerable and at high-risk of flooding and destruction during the annual monsoon season, which stretches from June to November and often punctuated by devastating typhoons. Because many families depend on garbage collection and sorting for their livelihoods, the monsoons slow them down and interrupt their work altogether. When there is no work, there is no food. On a good day, families are working for their next meal.
The Purple Centers Foundation helps communities weather the storms and incidental fires that come from living in highly-dense and unsafe housing. After the second day of school cancellations from rain, PCF initiate relief operations. Social workers, nurses and other staff visit communities to check on housing conditions, survey damage and raise awareness about eminent services they can avail of at one of our centers. PCF kitchen staff typically cook as many as 2,500 hot meals per day while other staff organize and distribute dry clothes and bed linens, offer health and medical interventions, and assess for other emergency relief serves.
The Purple Centers Foundation typically carries out between 3-5 relief operations every year.
For more information on PCF visit their website here http://purplecenters.org
