Receivers to givers: Rosalinda’s Story

Rosalinda makes her living cooking and selling snacks for those in her local community. She makes them in her small home in Quezon City in the Philippines. She tailors her prices to suit the purses of her customers. When the Philippines was placed in lockdown, public transport closures caused Rosalinda’s costs to increase. But when she saw how many of her neighbours had lost their own livelihoods, she decided not to pass her own increased costs onto her customers. Instead she reduced her already small profits, sometimes just breaking even, other times making a small loss.

The generous sacrifice made by Rosalinda and her family gave greater solidarity to her community as they all struggled together to survive the pandemic. This solidarity meant much more to Rosalinda than making a profit.

When Christmas was near, Rosalinda’s clients asked if she was able to get them festive foods like ham and cheese. With her much lower prices and her delayed payment schemes, she would meet many families’ dreams for the Christmas season if she did this.

However, Rosalinda’s savings had all been spent because of her generous actions throughout the worst of the pandemic. She then found out about the COVID-19 Recovery Program of ABM’s Philippines partner, E-CARE. This program uses the Receivers to Givers method, enabling Rosalinda to obtain a grant of 7,000 Philippines pesos, which meant she could bulk buy Christmas foods to sell to her customers.

This grant enabled both Rosalinda’s family and the families in her community to at least have a taste of Christmas cheer during a very grim time.

And the great news was that Rosalinda was able to “grant back” the amount to E-CARE by mid-January so that the money could be passed on to be used by others.
Rosalinda is among more than 500 families participating in the COVID recovery program of the Episcopal Church in the Philippines. ABM is one of the supporters of this fund.

ABM acknowledges the support of the Australian Government through the Australian NGO Cooperation Program (ANCP).