Reports

Summary of Year 2021

2021 was a difficult and challenging year for the Aeta people as well as for the Aeta Tribe Foundation. It has been a year of government lockdowns, restrictions, despair, and disruption. Many of our activities that serve the Aeta communities throughout Central Luzon, Philippines, have been limited because we have been avoiding large gatherings to prevent the spread of Covid-19 among the Aeta villages and communities. Our activities were performed with the strictest possible guidelines including providing cloth facemasks to protect the malnourished Aeta children who suffer from a lack of clean water and insufficient food.

At the height of the infections throughout the Philippines, the Aeta tribes remained on their ancestral lands and stayed away from neighboring cities and towns. The pandemic has thrust them back into their traditional ways in their close-knit community where they cultivate the land and grow enough food to feed the entire village. The elders have begun sharing their medicinal knowledge to fight Covid-19 and have begun growing herbal plants to use as medicine. We have learned by visiting their villages that the Aeta were using banana flowers or blossoms from banana trees as facemasks which meant that potential fruits from the banana trees were not available as food. Therefore, we provided cloth face masks as a safe and hygienic strategy aimed at preventing disease without impacting a potential food source.

To date, the Philippines had 3.27 million confirmed cases of Covid-19 and 52,962 deaths. The covid restrictions and continuous lockdowns in certain parts of the country have crippled the economy and many Filipinos, including the indigenous communities, have lost their jobs and livelihoods. The economic environment and the health hazards pushed the more vulnerable Aeta communities, a minority population, into deeper poverty. In addition, the long lockdowns meant the Aeta children had to stop going to school and while other children learned from online classes and virtual learning, the Aeta faced another disadvantage without access to these resources. They have no computers or Internet access in their villages. As it was, their education was already sub-standard since the Department of Education sends newly graduated teachers to teach in the Aeta villages, a training like that of internship programs.

As a foundation, we continued our efforts to reach out to the Aeta communities and through word of mouth, we were approached by seven (7) Aeta villages from the provinces of Pampanga and Tarlac namely: Mawacat, Camachile, Inararo, Wangwaingan, Maligaya, Manalal, and Malalabatay.

Our biggest accomplishment was building a complete water system in the Mawacat village of roughly 1000 households. There is a primary school that serves 300 children. We provided them with a 1,000-gallon aluminum tank that supplied clean water to the newly built handwashing station and connected hoses and pipes to eight (8) toilets inside each of the eight classrooms. The construction took almost a year to complete, and we handed the water systems to the Department of Education in December before the start of the new year.

The most challenging projects were completed in the villages of Maligaya, Manalal, and Malalabay in Capas, Tarlac province. When our honorary Aeta members went to visit these villages, they travelled on foot with one cart pulled by a water buffalo since there were no roads and no other transportation available. Our members began their journey at midnight and walked for twelve (12) hours with stops to rest and sleep on the cart before reaching the Aeta villages. They crossed twenty-two streams and rivers, waited for the military’s permission to cross over the riffle range and targets, and traversed muddy terrains. The villages were hidden in the forested area far away from the main city and towns. They were rarely visited by local government representatives or non-government organizations. The Aeta people were very pleased to receive visitors. The discussion about building water systems in their villages took two days to figure out plans and logistics as well as providing food for the Aeta people since the men would focus mainly on building the water systems, pulling them away from farming. Fortunately, several strong men in the three villages were willing to work together and travel long distances to purchase rice and sardines, plastic tanks, water containers, hoses, pipes, cement, ropes, and other materials needed to complete the water systems. With the help of the water buffalos, they carried all the supplies back to their villages on foot. The construction took four months. In addition, we distributed a water buffalo to each of the three villages to help with transportation.

Throughout the year 2021, we have collected and spent $33,147 of donated funds. We had spent $22,039 (66%) for water systems; $4,119 (12%) for food relief programs; $3,600 (11%) to pay as salaries to our nine Aeta honorary members; $1,850 (6%) for planting 500 fruit trees plus purchasing water buffaloes to give each one of the three villages – Maligaya, Manalal, and Malalabatay. The remaining $1,539 (5%) was spent for administrative subscriptions, postage, bank service fees, and office supplies.

Reports

Summary of Year 2021

QUARTERLY REPORT