St. Luke’s Foundation reaches out to poverty-stricken community amid COVID-19 crisis

In response to the COVID-19 crisis, St. Luke’s Foundation, along with the Nursing Care Group and DSWD, organized the "Bayanihan COVID-19 Outreach Project”. It targets families most vulnerable to the total lockdown being imposed in Luzon as a result of the crisis. These are identified families who are living in hand-to-mouth existence exacerbated by their inability to make a daily living. The selection of the beneficiary families is done in cooperation with the Department of Social Welfare and Development through its area coordinator who, being regularly on the ground to implement the government social welfare programs, have mapped out of the poorest of the poor in Barangay Baesa.

Barangay Baesa is one of the most densely inhabited communities in Quezon City with an estimated population of 85,000 per 2019 Census, a significant percentage of which are people who live below the poverty threshold.

The project targets 200 families, 30 of which are already the beneficiaries under the ongoing 4Ps Community Adoption Program of the Foundation. These are families supported by breadwinners such as tricycle drivers, ambulant vendors, jeepney drivers, carpenters, construction workers, housekeepers, unemployed, and others who are in the lowest rung of wage earners and subsist on a day to day basis.

The project implementation involved the distribution of relief goods to the families consisting of one sack of rice and assorted grocery and hygiene products that is estimated to be good for a family of five for up to four to five days of living. It is the Foundation’s modest contribution to the effort of the government to help the underprivileged tide through their most basic survival need during these difficult times.