Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink...

I couldn't help but remember Coleridge's words when 80% of Metro Manila was submerged due to flooding caused by Typhoon Ondoy on 26th September, 2009.
There was, indeed, water, water everywhere but due to bust riverbanks, burst pipelines, washed out communities, thick sludgy mud that covered a large part of the city, clogged-up roads, for many, there was not a single drop to drink.
The TV channels were transmitting images of middle class families who'd lost everything, cars upturned in streams that were once roads, evacuation centers packed, organizations handing out food packages, and the 6 families that glorious Gloria allowed to camp out on one of her many red carpets at Malacanang palace (whoopeedoo).
....but, all i could think about were the squatter communities. The invisible people who wouldn't dare go anywhere near these evacuation centers, because they knew that they would be thrown out, families found huddling in the back room of a church, reliant on flood water for sustenance, trash pickers with no dry trash to pick through, collapsed shanty houses and no access to new building materials, no possible way of finding enough pesos to buy drinking water or rice for 8 children with nothing but wet clothes and the prospect of typhoid, TB or at best, extreme cases of diarrhea to look forward to.
My students were thinking the same.
Due to our partnership with PCF (www.p-c-f.org), our waste management company, these communities, that escape the vast majority of people here, were ON our radar.
In the weeks that followed the flooding, we managed to direct most of our relief, in kind and in money, through PCF, to the thousands of squatters who needed the aid the most.
There were so many stories of corruption on the local and government levels with national aid efforts, so much distrust in 'reputed' organisations like the red cross, we felt so relieved and lucky to have a woman like Jane Walker and her amazing organisation as our distributor of aid. And let me tell you, with an international school like this one, there was a lot of aid to give!
So yes, during this time, we delivered clean water to thousands of families that had no access whatsoever, we also managed to feed thousands too, and provide the necessary medical treatment to prevent serious sickness spreading (though some deaths were inevitable in such extreme circ**stances).
We also bought a water pump that would help a key area by PCF school deal with flood water next time around. This was all post-relief work.
How do we sustain our aid and ensure consistently improved sanitation for these squatter communities?
Well, we continue to support the community through PCF's livelihood projects. Many families are now financed through our trash. And the more responsible segregators we are, the more the community can benefit from recycling initiatives. We continue to be committed to 'education for all' by ensuring that our students don't lose sight of the plight of these 'invisible' communities and in turn, help fund the children in Tondo so that they can go to school too...
But, this isn't enough.