The Palawan Project

Welcome to The Palawan Project! We are an organisation focussing on helping the Palawano Tribe which is located in Brooke’s Point, Palawan, The Philippines.

This organisation is founded by Jenny Francis and Lucy Kelly. We are two New Zealand University Students who recently travelled to the Philippines for a holiday. When in Puerto Princesa, we decided that we wanted to do some volunteering. After meeting our amazing taxi driver, he suggested going to see some of the various tribes around the beautiful island. We were absolutely shocked by the living conditions of these wonderful people, so we decided to do something about it.

After visiting the tribes, we realised that giving them money is not the way to go about things. Sadly, they have been unable to adjust to a modern society which means that they cannot work, have low education and are stuck in an endless cycle of poverty. We wanted to come up with a way to help these people without simply giving them a large sum of money. Therefore, we have created The Palawan Project!

We have five projects which have come straight from the Palawano Tribe. We are currently working on our first project:

1. EDUCATION. The children there do actually go to school, but the level of education they receive is inadequate. We want to promote learning Tagalog (the national language of the Philippines), as well as English. We, however, do not just want to focus on the children. We believe that we can help the adults to learn skills too as most of them cannot read or write. This is something which most of us take for granted and will help them to find jobs.

After quite a lot of research, to get a regular (5 days a week) teacher up the mountain for one year, it will cost 240,000PHP, roughly 8000NZD. All donations will be paid into a shared bank account, owned by Jenny Francis and Lucy Kelly.

Below are the other four projects we want to instigate. This is what they want!

2. DOCTOR. Very sadly, the people of the Palawano tribe are very malnourished, making them much more susceptible to disease than other people living in cities. They do not have the facilities nor the money to receive adequate healthcare, hence it is extremely important to organise a doctor to go up the mountain and check that the tribe is healthy. We also aim to provide necessary medicines such as vaccinations.

3. ROAD. The path up the mountain is difficult - and we don’t consider ourselves to be unfit! The people walk the two hour long track around twice a day in extreme heat, whilst carrying very heavy loads. They want a road so that it becomes easier for them to transport goods to and from the mountain, perhaps enabling them to trade and earn money.

4. WORK. As aforementioned, simply giving these people money is not going to change much. They need to be able to sustain themselves and provide for their own families. We aim to help the adults learn skills that enable them to work and earn money on their own. These jobs do not need to be a doctor or a lawyer, but something that enables them to survive and sustain themselves independently.

5. MEETING HOUSE: The tribe has nowhere for their entire community to meet indoors. They are very religious, but have nowhere to pray. They want a building for them to hold gatherings and meetings. Please note that we are not a religious organisation, but we respect religion and want to provide them with the resources to continue their worship.

Currently, we are just helping this tribe. However, given growth of this page and the successes we strive to achieve, we aim to help more and more tribes.

Please donate! These people have nothing, and they need your help!