General Santos · Philippines
I’m going to General Santos.
Registered volunteer, Philippine Red Cross
Logistics & Communications · General SantosOn June 8, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake hit the southern Philippines — a place I once lived and served. I’m going back to help, and I leave the moment this trip is funded.
of $8,000 goal · self-funded · I leave the moment it’s met
What happened
A week on, the southern Philippines is still digging out.
At least 68 people were killed, and more than 1.3 million have been affected — tens of thousands displaced from homes damaged or destroyed. General Santos’s airport is closed and power is patchy across the region. Filipino relief crews moved fast — the slow part now is getting food, water, and shelter the last mile to the families and communities still waiting on it.
From the affected area in the days after the quake.
The job
I’m not going there to wander around and smile. I have a job.
I’ll serve as a registered volunteer with the Philippine Red Cross, on the two things that are really one: logistics and communications — making sure the right help reaches the right people, and that the people doing the helping can actually reach each other.
It isn’t glamorous work. It’s clipboards, manifests, and long days — but it’s the work that decides whether a family has shelter tonight or waits another week for it.
“…and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace.”Ephesians 6:15
That’s the assignment under the assignment: boots on the ground, for Jesus. Show up where it hurts, and do the work.
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Relief rarely fails for lack of supplies. It fails in the seams — a truck that leaves half-empty, water that sits in the wrong town for two days, a village no one’s reached because the road to it is buried. My job is to close those seams, and to push help down the last mile to the coastal and island communities that are hardest to reach.
The single biggest problem in this disaster has been communication. With the power down, just getting an honest read on who needs what, and where, has been the hardest part of the whole response. That’s the work I’m walking into.
Behind it all sits Davao — the rear base, with the port and the room. Supplies stage there first, then move forward to General Santos and out to the front. I’ll help run that end too: received, sorted, stored, sent.
Why me
I’m not going to the Philippines as a stranger. On a yearlong mission called the World Race, I lived and served there, and ran the logistics that moved a team of 56 across thirteen countries. Getting people and supplies through chaos to exactly where they’re needed is the muscle this trip asks for.
Breezy Point, New York, 2012 — pulling a family’s safe from the rubble after Hurricane Sandy. (Photo: Mark Lennihan / AP)
And I know exactly where this calling started: in 2012, after Hurricane Sandy, in the ashes of a Breezy Point home — where I found a family’s safe sitting behind a small wooden cross that hadn’t burned. I’ve never been the same.
One family I know
The work is the command center. This part is personal.
My assignment in General Santos is with the Red Cross — running logistics and communications out of the command center. That’s the job, and it’s why I’m going. This home is separate, and personal: it belongs to a friend’s family, the quake took the roof and most of the walls, and helping them rebuild is a promise I’m keeping on my own time — alongside the assignment, not in place of it.
Where it goes
Two weeks on the ground, $8,000 total — about 30% of it goes straight to aid bought and distributed there.
I leave the moment it’s funded. Anything given beyond the goal goes straight into the distribution fund.
See the line-by-line budgetHide the budget
This is a personal mission trip — gifts are not tax-deductible.
Give
If this is yours to be part of, here’s how.
Every dollar accounted for. I’ll bring back the story — photos and an honest report from the ground. Questions? Email [email protected].
I serve as a registered volunteer with the Philippine Red Cross. This page and this fundraiser are my own — independent of the Red Cross, not endorsed by it, and not collecting on its behalf.
Walk with me
Not able to give right now? Walk with me anyway. I’ll send updates from the ground — and word of wherever I’m headed next.