This village exists in the middle of a tug-a-war between these two armies.  Both sides occasionally come to collect soldiers, many of whom are children.  Locals have had to learn how to play both sides to survive.  Parents, concerned for the survival of their children and hoping to give them a better life, will sometimes give them to wealthy households in the down-land cities.  Sometimes life for these children in the city is the life of a slave; sometimes it is one of better care and some education.  It’s a gamble.  Other parents try to send their children away to a subsidized boarding school.  Children in school are less likely to be conscripted.

 From the reports we’ve received, Teeu is one of the children who was caught in this conflicted township.  Seeing that conscription was likely, his mother begged a traveling social worker to take her son.

 Teeu’s father was a police officer whose leg was maimed in a crash with a Chinese farm vehicle.  Teeu has two older brothers.  When he left home, one was in the army at an unknown location and another was a drug addict.   Sending Teeu away was his mother’s last hope of keeping a child safe.  There was a tearful silence when Teeu left.  Everybody was too choked up to talk.  His mom’s last words were, “Don’t worry about us and listen to this good man, son of mine.”

 The social worker negotiated a deal with a Chinese businessman for a horse for Teeu to use and they rode for 4 ½ days through the mountains.  Finally, they arrived at a main roadway and rode the bus another 2 days before arriving at our children’s home.

 Teeu has been with us 7 years now.  He’s become a jammin’ drummer.   He is also happy and healthy.  Not all children who come to us are with us as long as Teeu, but it’s nice when they are.  Many children join the work force at 14-15 in countries like Myanmar/Burma.  Some children are able to return home after a year or two.  No two situations are exactly alike.

 You can continue to be an advocate for children like Teeu by getting your friends to rock Project: AK-47 merch and to join the monthly $7 campaign.  We appreciate that you’ve taken the time to read this and care about children like Teeu.  Caring counts and helps us make choices to help people when it’s within our power to do so.

Now, you might be asking, “What is CADT 079”? The answer is rather complex but to summarize: Just like in the USA and other nations, the tribal people of the Philippines were the original inhabitants and owners of the country’s land. As “civilization” developed, companies came in and cut down their trees, dug up their gold, destroyed their rain forest and left the people in dire straits. This treatment caused rebel groups to rise up in resistance, and created deep tensions for the past five decades in Mindanao. During the term of President Ramos, he signed The IPRA Law – Indigenous People’s Rights Act of 1997. This act allowed the tribes of the Philippines to file for ownership of their land. When the land is approved by the NCIP – National Counsel for Indigenous Peoples, the land is turned into a CADT – Certificate of Ancestral Domains Title and given a number … hence, CADT 079 in Agusan del Sur, Mindanao, an area of 68,000 hectares that we hope to expand for the Manobo, Banwaon, and TalaAndig tribes. CADT 079 is also filled with rebels, 70% of whom are children, so Just Projects International is focused here on developing economic and education projects to keep more children from being recruited by the rebels and to provide freedom and a future for those who have already been recruited. Up until this present time, JPI’s Project: AK-47 has been raising funds to build schools for these children in CADT 079, to purchase books, and pay the salaries of the teachers. We have also been working to develop plans to utilize the natural resources to provide sustainable economic development that will empower the people of CADT 079 to continue to build schools and pay for their teachers in the future without funds coming from outside their CADT. Through our Project: AK-47, we hope to see a child-soldier free CADT 079.

This development process is slow and difficult, and we didn’t expect to be producing funds from within the CADT for another year. However, when divine winds hit the CADT, uprooting thousands of hectares of trees, we realized that we had to turn this Wood Recovery into financial income that could build more schools, roads, and medical clinics (as there are none here), and to invest in other agricultural projects on the CADT that will provide future sustainable economic growth. It is also vital that these trees on the ground be cut up and cleared to prevent forest fires, and to allow us to work with the DENR – Department of Energy & Natural Resources to replant and fill up the forest again. The laws regarding logging and natural resources in Mindanao are complex due to severe past abuses by many companies and politicians. Therefore, we have been working for three months to move forward with this project that has the potential to jump-start the economic and educational development on CADT 079 by providing the capital funds for many startup projects and for the building of schools, roads, and medical clinics. This could be a game-changer in the history of these tribes. Stay tuned for future reports as to government approval and future progress. Thanks for joining us on the wild ride of this journey in the mountains of Mindanao.

Saga is typical of a child at risk in our Upper Mekong Basin projects, in places like Myanmar.  His dad died when he was months old. By the time he reached 6 years old, his mother had succumbed to tuberculosis.  At least, that is the social worker’s best guess.

Children in weakened family structures are at high risk.  They die of malnutrition and disease, become indentured slaves of the wealthy, or are conscripted into the military.  Saga doesn’t remember much about his earlier years.  He has only one thing to say about them:  Hunger!

Hunger was like a blazing neon sign in front of little Saga.  Village food was usually rice along with either some pounded ginger and mustard green soup or a very flat, fermented, sunbaked bean-cake.  Time was measured between working the fields and constant hunger pains.  When one of our friends saw Saga on his travels through the region, he thought, “Mercy! He’s such a thin, suffering waif.”  Our friend did some background checking and found that Saga was just getting shuffled around the village’s bamboo and thatch homes and had no real place to land.  It was probably a simple matter of time before something worse happened to him.

Our friend brought Saga to us over 7 years ago.  He has gradually opened up as we’ve loved on him.  He’s always been a bit introverted and is a deep thinker.  He cares about others, though, and is eager to help…especially the orphaned and impoverished.  He can empathize.  He’s a polite kid, a hard worker in school, and an awesome young man.

 It is your partnership with Project: AK-47 that let’s us continue to fight for these children.  They are worth every penny we can send their way.  Please go to our site to join our rescue and care campaign today.  Please invite your friends!

 Many thanks to those of you who are part of our team.

More books are written and more songs are sung about love than any other theme in the world because every person on the face of the planet longs to be loved. Love makes our lives more enjoyable, but also makes our hearts more vulnerable. Love makes hearts smile and souls suffer; it builds families and breaks hearts; it fulfills dreams and causes nightmares. We can’t live without it and we struggle to live with it. Love is truly what makes the world go round and turns our lives upside down. All of these facts make Valentine’s Day the most loved and hated holiday of the year.

Everything that is worth anything will cost us something, and true love will cost us all that we have. Love is a risky endeavor, but it is well worth the investment of a lifetime. Unfortunately, for every beautiful love story we see, there are many others that are not to be. For many, what begins with great expectation, ends with total devastation. Not every romance has a happy ending. The healing of hearts takes time, and for some, scars become calluses that keep them from feeling deep love again.

The fact of the matter is that love can be a dangerous proposition. Very few ever make it through the minefield of relationships unscathed, but without relationships and love, we really never live. Love is the most powerful force on the planet. It can make us feel more alive than we’ve ever felt before. It can also make us feel like we want to give up on life and die, just to stop the pain inside our souls. To ignore the pain, many try mind over matter – mind over matters of the heart. Although this may alleviate the pain, it also eliminates wonderful things in our lives, like compassion, sensitivity, empathy, and intimacy. In reality, giving up on love is giving up on life, and there is much more lost than gained.

Truly great men and women never have more mind than heart, because people who live from their minds tend to be detached from life. Things don’t seem to touch them very much or very deeply, and they remain unavailable and detached. They hold other people at a distance, and may feel cold or dead inside, with little to strive for and little love to give. To truly make a life, we need to truly love … at all costs. The cost is great and the stakes are high, but the rewards are worth it and the return on investment is out of this world!

Far too often, in the sphere of love, we can become quite narcissistic – focused on what makes us feel acceptable and lovable to someone; obsessed with an individual and depressed if our love is unrequited. True love is never really about us … it’s about someone else and what we can do for them, even if they never respond in gratitude. Real love sees the needs that others have and reaches out to meet those needs. Today, when we are spending our billions on showy displays of affection, let us also remember to take some time for reflection that leads to correction … to be moved by love to right some wrongs on our planet. If we all really loved others in our worldwide community, there wouldn’t be 1.6 billion children at risk and 28 million slaves … there couldn’t be in a world filled with love. All of the slaves and children at risk in our world really matter. Maybe it’s time we let love move us to action … individually and collectively, until everyone in our world is free. In the end, it’s matters of the heart that matter the most.

Meet our friend Vincente.

He is 13 years old, in the 7th grade and an imitator of two amazing parents.

This is his story.

Vincente’s Sunday school class had been raising money for child soldiers and his teacher agreed to match the class’ funds if they could raise $35 per month. The class wasn’t meeting this goal every month, so Vincente began to think of what else he could do to help. He started collecting change at various church events to add to the funds his Sunday school class was collecting each month. When that still wasn’t enough, Vincente began exploring additional ways to raise money. With the encouragement of his parents, Vincente started talking with other kids in his youth group in addition to other kids at his school. This gave Vincente the idea to ask his friends to pay him to get a blue mohawk and he would give the money collected to Project: AK-47.

Vincente and his parents put together a plan and presented it to his school principle. With a little negotiation and a fighting will, he persuaded his school to allow him to pass out flyers , talk about the project for a full month during morning announcements, and arrange the collection of money for Project: AK-47 in all classrooms. They set a project goal of $500.

After a plan was in place, Vincente grew out his hair for 7 months and then (with his mom’s help) cut and dyed it into a 10″ tall blue mohawk. When Vincente’s mom asked him what he would say to the kids that have been rescued by Project: AK-47 he replied “I would tell him that there are people on the other side of the world that care about you, even if we’ve never met you before. We do care.” When we asked Vincente’s mom about this experience she replied: “Can we solve all the world’s problems? Absolutely not, but that shouldn’t stop us from doing whatever we can to help. Sometimes as a parent, you wonder if you’re teaching your child anything successfully. If Vincente learns nothing else from his parents,I’m so glad he got that one idea.”

At the end of Vincente’s blue mohawk campaign, he helped rase more than $1700 for Project: AK-47. We are so thankful for hearts like Vincente’s. Without them, our efforts would not be possible.

It is our hope that Vincente’s incredible story is an encouragement to you in a few ways. It is our desire for this story to give you hope and the knowledge that no matter your age or abundance of resources, you can make an impact.  Know that Vincente is the same age as many of the child soldiers he is raising money to help protect. These children are taught to be imitators of war and are trained to kill. We exist to protect and rescue these children from a life of bondage and war.

Find out how you can help Project: AK-47 HERE

That is when Fredrico came to our town almost 20 years ago.  He couldn’t adjust to the government’s home for kids and eventually fell in with the cartel.  One night, he got a girl pregnant.  Donato was born from that spur of the moment fling, despite the fact that his mother tried to commit suicide while he was still in the womb.

Later, Donato went to live with his grandmother.  As he began to get older, his dad, Fedrico, kept coming around to teach Donato important life skills, like stealing, and other activities appropriate to a man of the cartel.  When his dad ended up in jail, we had an opportunity to get him into our custody.  He’s been training in our semi-pro soccer program and is in 9^th grade now.  This is a long story made short but, hopefully, it gives you a look into the world of the young men we are assisting through our program in Mexico.

Though Donato’s story may not be as dramatic as some of the others we have told, if a young man like Donato didn’t come to us, chances are he would be a drug addict working as a thug and assassin for the cartel right now.  Preventative programs work. They keep kids from painful experiences and from doing things they will hate themselves for later.

If this story connects with you, please purchase a set of our Mexico dog tags (HERE) and tell the story of Donato and the many cartel kids of Mexico’s drug wars.  Or join our monthly giving campaign at $7 a month (HERE).

With gratitude –the PAK47 team in Mexico.

]]> http://projectak47blog.com/donato-joins-our-semi-pro-soccer-program/feed/ 0 http://projectak47blog.com/project-ak-47-introduces-colour-of-london/ http://projectak47blog.com/project-ak-47-introduces-colour-of-london/#comments Tue, 15 Jan 2013 04:55:33 +0000 Rachel Petrillo http://projectak47blog.com/?p=3341  

The musical collaboration “Colour of London” is made up of one Jimmie Allen and one Nate Woodall. These boys are not your typical duo, as they pull out all the stops in an effort to make music that promotes “love, equality, and truth.” This is not a trite saying to these guys, but rather a very evident truth, which is prominently displayed in such songs as “Carolyn” and “Shine Out.”

Jimmie, who after losing a bet, found himself a contestant on the 2010 American Idol, admits he thought his journey would lead more towards sports. However, a torn ACL quickly trumped that dream, and in its place, the world gained a musician. Jimmie states that he realized the world of music was something he would not take no for an answer on, and it is with that mentality that he and band mate, Nate, take on the joys and trials of creating, recording, and performing their music.

Nate Woodall, a former teacher, now lead guitarist for Colour of London, began his music-making days playing the sax as a sixth grader. He attributes his instrumental shift to the exposure he had watching his dad play music with friends; it was at the age of sixteen that Nate followed suit. It is obvious that all those years of practice have clearly paid off for Nate as we see him exhibit some serious skill with Colour of London.

Also included among Jimmie and Nate’s passions, is their incredible platform and voice as a band to raise awareness and support for the cause of Project AK-47. Jimmie tells us that his desire to promote the cause comes from watching family members become involved with gangs, leading to a dangerous and poor quality of life. He says the difference he sees in the lives of those who have avoided or managed to get out of that lifestyle, versus those who have not, is dramatic. Drawing on these experiences, the band makes an effort to make music that inspires and motivates.

Carolyn by Colour of London

Click here to view the embedded video.

To begin this united collaboration, Datu Bhen decided that we needed to gather all of the chiefs and leaders together for a big celebration of unity, and a tribal congress to discuss the enlargement of their ancestral lands from 68,000 hectares to over 200,000, and to plan the building of many schools, prioritizing the villages in order to create greater peace, and rescue more children where the needs are greatest.

News spread, and over 1000 tribal people gathered for a weekend in Datu Bhen’s village of Tumalog. Many of the tribal leaders brought food and supplies to share with the greater community, but they were insufficient to sustain over 1000 people for the weekend. Just Projects International committed staff and finances to help feed the people and provide awards for the winners of all of the tribal games competition (sports, tribal dance and fashion). What a joy it was to see over 1000 people eating and celebrating together, building greater unity and the collaboration that will be needed to build their schools and develop their land and economy together.

History is being written and destiny is being shaped in the mountains of Mindanao, and we are so grateful to be a part of it. We are thankful that you have chosen to be a part of this as well. Thanks for taking this journey with us. We will continue to provide regular updates for you, and we invite you to share your comments on our website, as well as on our facebook page, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest pages.

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This datu helplessly watched  logging companies make roads up into his mountains, plow up the farms of his people, cut down acre after acre in the virgin forest of their precious trees, and truck them down to the lowlands to make millions and millions of dollars, none of which was given back to the tribal people. This chief knew that the lowlanders looked down upon his people because they viewed them as ignorant and uneducated … and he longed for a day when life would be better for his tribes.

The day came when a son was born to this Manobo tribal chief and his Banwaon wife. They named him Balvino, and the datu had big dreams for him. He wanted Balvino to be able to attend and finish high school and college in the lowlands, to be able to create a better future than others in their tribe had ever been able to imagine.  This Datu realized that in order for his tribe to overcome their adversities and the abuses that they had suffered, someone from his tribe would have to be sent to the lowlands to obtain a higher education and then return to help protect and develop his people and their land.

When Balvino grew up, his father sent him to school in the city, where people called him Bhen … then when he was 17 years old, he showed up on our doorstep (Bryan and Diane Thomas) with a message from his father, asking us to teach and mentor his son to find purpose in life and to become a leader. Bhen lived in the city where we worked, Butuan, and we taught and mentored him for 5 years, before he dedicated his life to serve the tribal peoples of Mindanao.

Datu Bhen “Kalambuan” Andaya

 Many years later, President Ramos passed the “April Law” in the Philippines, granting permission to the tribal people to own their ancestral lands. This law truly became a “destiny changer” for the indigenous people of the Philippines, and provided the opportunity for the Manobo, Banwaon, TalaAndig, and other tribes of Northern Mindanao and all of the Philippines to gain titles of their massive portions of land.

Datu Bhen “Kalambuan” with his mother & father, Datu Manpaundang, just before he died this year

Several years ago, Bhen was asked to become the Supreme Datu of his tribes, given the title, “Datu Kalambuan” – Chief Progress, and also given the responsibility for managing their huge track of ancestral land. To protect his people from unscrupulous businesses, he asked Just Projects International (JPI) to help manage their ancestral lands and create rules of engagement that would protect the people and the environment. Since the land is also filled with rebels, 70% of whom are child soldiers under 17 years of age, JPI was also asked to build schools throughout their ancestral lands in the mountains of Mindanao through our Project: AK-47.  These schools will be used to protect the children at risk, keeping them from being recruited as child soldiers, and preparing them to use the God-given resources of their land to build a future for their people.

 This is the beginning of the JPI – PAK47 story in the mountains of Mindanao. It’s still a long way to the “happy ever after”, so please join us and help write the pages of this epic story.

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“My father was a drug addict and it made him crazy bad.  In fact, one day, he took a meat cleaver and beat mother’s legs and ran off.  We never saw him again.  I was really young at that time.  My older Sis remembers more.  Mom was at the hospital for over 6 months before she came home.  She was never the same, and eventually, she ran away too.  She just up and left us kids staring at each other with nothing to eat and nowhere to go.  We’ve never seen Mom again either.

Someone helped us locate my older sister at the military camp so we moved in with her there and went into training as soldiers.  Soldiering isn’t a very good life either, so all three of us snuck away and became deserters.   We lived on whatever we could beg, scrounge, or steal, but it was better than the army.  We heard about a home for children who wanted to go to school instead of fight.  We showed up on their porch one day and they fed us a nice meal.  Not long after that they arranged to take us.”

These are the words of Song, a polite and petite girl who has now been with us 6 years and is studying at a 5^th grade level.  She came to us when she was 7.   She had lost everything and just about everyone in her life and knew nothing of kindness, tenderness, or care.

Song isn’t a great student.  Maybe some of you can relate.  School, in her opinion, is a good place to be social and dream the time away.  She loves to sing and narrate and is pretty smart but just wants to have fun.

Growing up while fending for herself has its carryovers.  For example, Song still likes to pinch others’ property, which can be rather annoying. She also loves beautiful things but hasn’t learned much about how to care for them since nobody ever cared for her as a child.  She’s a beautiful thing herself!

Once, during a heavy downpour, she realized she had forgotten her school bag and books in the classroom.  It was a Friday night and study hall hour had arrived.  Song pretended to look up and down for her book bag, not finding it anywhere.  Then she accused her friends of hiding it and created a big quarrel.  Finally, the house parents had to step in.  Mr. Yawn sent some of the boys tromping through the rain over to the school to look and, sure enough, they found her bag.

So you can see, Song is a handful.  Her lady-like carriage, competitive spirit and her constant stream of chatter make her a unique package.  She is a great little hostess too.  We are grateful to have her as part of our community.  She has learned to trust some of the staff and really share her heart with them.

You are the key reason we are able to help children like this –thank you!  Project: AK-47 offers many ways to give a little that count as a lot for these children.  It is you, our community that helps us to keep winning in the hard places.

Here are four ways you can help now:

1. Join our monthly giving campaign
2. Chose alternative giving this Holiday
3. Text a friend and tell them to go to www.ProjectAK47.com
4. Share this story via social media (button below)

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