SEPTEMBER 2014
SCHOOL-WIDE
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Little Pull Tab
Big Difference
T
he awful smell. That smell was the strongest memory Pat Hallinan retained from a visit several years ago to a dump in Manila where hundreds of people lived in squalor, surviving just by what they could glean from the mountains of trash. Ms. Hallinan, an APIS teacher, new to the school this year, was distressed by what she saw. “It was rotting rubbish. They live in it,” she said. She remembers there was mud up to her knees. And she remembers seeing a child about 4 years old, naked and “just shivering” in that mud. That memory has remained fresh to her as Ms. Hallinan has sought in all the years since to support a charity, the Philippine Community Fund, that works to prevent and end child labor and the desperate poverty in the Philippines, like that experienced by those who dwell and work in the dumps. PCF provides an education and meals for children, as well as health care and livelihood training for adults, among other efforts. As a teacher then at the International School Manila, Ms. Hallinan became aware of PCF when Jane Walker MBE, the CEO and founder of PCF, spoke at the International School Manila. “Just hearing [Ms. Walker’s] story to start with and then seeing the work she was doing for kids, to try to break that cycle of poverty, really impressed me,” Ms. Hallinan said. One of PCF’s projects is to teach mothers of the PCF students livelihood skills, like how to create items and sellable products using recycled materials such as soda can ring pull tabs. Participants in the program were turning out beautiful handbags, placemats, bracelets, iPad covers — all created from the tabs saved from the top of soda cans. Ms. Hallinan decided that collecting and donating those ring pull tabs was a way she could assist PCF’s work. The International School Manila set up a collection box for the ring pull tabs. In support of that effort, “everywhere I go, I ask people to collect ring pulls for me,” Ms. Hallinan said, adding that many of her relatives back in her native Australia are also collecting for her now. Over the years, Ms. Hallinan estimates she has collected and then delivered to Manila thousands of the pull tabs for PCF.
A close-up of one of the Philippine Community Fund bags shows how hundreds of ring pull tabs are incorporated in the design.
Ms. Hallinan wears a shoulder bag made from ring pull tabs by the Philippine Community Fund artisans.
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