20k notebooks in one month!!

Hello friends!! It's summer and we are officially starting our Ambit Notebook Campaign! We are very happy to announce that we have another village to serve starting this year, and we can't wait to introduce them to you guys. Please watch out for our upcoming videos :)
FIVE COMMUNITIES, 20K NOTEBOOKS, are you with us???

12, 485 notebooks gathered in two weeks!

Dear Ambit friends, supporters, fellow volunteers, we are very happy to update you that as of today, we have already gathered 12,485 notebooks! At least 8,000 more notebooks to go in two weeks time, looks huge a figure to conquer but we are very confident that the target will surely be reached by God's grace and provision. Our heartfelt thanks to everyone who has been working very hard in this mission field that the Lord has brought us to till. Our Ambit journey is one that is made more meaningful by allowing us to use social media not to brag about what we do but to share with others the same opportunity to make a difference that we have been given. The experience is incredibly enriching, and humbling in most ways. Glory to God alone!

Thank you San Jose Catholic School-Augustinian!

We extend our heartfelt gratitude to the faculty, staff and students of San Jose Catholic School-Augustinian for rendering 1huge bag of notebooks for less fortunate children who has desire and dreams to finish their studies.😊
Special thanks to Ms. Joanne Naorbe for facilitating the program. 😘
To Ezekiel, salamat sa assistance Ez. ☺
From AMBIT Family, thank you so much! 😇

 

 

Our youngest volunteer is at it again!!

hello everyone!!!im once again knocking on your generous hearts...please help me gather notebooks for the poor children of Hinobaan by donating any amount. please Pm nanay or comment your donations.1 notebook costs 10.00. thank you and may God return many more blessings to u and your family!!!


#lovingissharing
#NOTEBOOKS
#forthelessfortunate
#3rdyear

We keep growing and growin!

Our AMBIT journey has taught us that when there is HOPE, it is POSSIBLE...
For this year, our goal is 5 COMMUNITIES, 20K NOTEBOOKS.

Ambit Life Goes On

I was invited as guest speaker in a family day, Sangke High School, our very first children beneficiaries when we started with our Kwaderno project in summer of 2014. It was bittersweet getting back on mission field, months after my father passed away suddenly. 

Ambit will never be the same again without Papang, my number one supporter, great encourager, hankering mentor, avid fan in most ways. I thought I was never going to continue anymore, but the sign posts are leading me to the mission land. All in God's time.

My vigor was greatly renewed seeing once again the familiar faces, and meeting our new set of young volunteers. These were among the little ones we first shared our notebooks with 4 years ago. Now they want to do the same and signed up as Ambit volunteers. I had to call them up the stage not to brag but to make them as example of the importance of our influence to these young ones. I cannot wait for our Notebook Distribution this coming May. Things unfold, miracles, surprises, lessons and overflowing hope. This world is still a beautiful place. 

Rising from the Charcoal, by Eduard Cortes Dionio

Ambit’s journey is one riddled with obstacles and some difficulties in between and last summer’s notebook distribution proved to be such an impossible mission, but we didn’t only gather 10,000 notebooks – we reached 13,000 and that is because of you our beloved donors and supporters. Each bend in the road, can be surprising if not discouraging, but as we go along, the children we get to know with are the ones who give us the encouragement that we need. John Mark is one of these children that we  met recently. As a 14-year-old boy, he is way too small for his age. His skin is tanned due to long hours of hard work in their farm under the scorching sun. In the mountains, it’s cool in the evening but mostly the sun is harsh during the day. Parts of his arms and legs are also scarred due to accidents he experiences while working. Most of his fingers and toe nails are horrendously dark and untrimmed; we later found out that his family is into charcoal making.    

Despite being small, one can tell how strong he actually is, as his arms are toned compared to other kids his age. John Mark is the fourth in the brood of nine. One of his older brothers lives faraway to work for a family who sends him to school. Other older brothers are away to try and fend for themselves. For John Mark, school was his least priority, putting aside his own desires of finishing school and getting a degree. He said he is needed in the farm and charcoal making, much more than he is needed in school. Finishing school was some distant imagination.

While on our way to Sitio So-So to distribution notebooks, we passed by John Mark pulling his carabao home, from all in a day's work. Pictured here are his parents who do do all sorts of tilling, logging, and charcoal making to feed all 9 children.

John Mark was a shy boy in front of the volunteers, but maybe he was just not familiar with us; we were strangers to him. We learned piece by piece that he was fun to be with after some series of random conversations. There were times that he would blurt out some jokes out of thin air and the rest of the highland kids would burst into innocent laughers. He had helped us in so many ways while we were staying in one of the local’s houses in Sitio So-So. It was surprising at first to see him carry heavy boxes without batting an eyelash.

John Mark's dedication as our beneficiary and now volunteer is very encouraging.

It is true that legends and metaphors are not only resting behind the highland’s vast forest; they were also laid open in shared meals and conversations with people especially children. John Mark’s story was not an easy one to listen to. Most of us shook our heads while others simply looked away.

John Mark's family is a product of intergenerational cycle of poverty. His grandparents were also living in poverty. The next generation—his mother and father, soon inherited the same problem due to lack of education.

John Mark with his buddy Gabriel. John Mark is 14 and Gabriel is 11.

The boy is dreaming that one day his family would no longer be making charcoals so he needed to study even if studying meant he would wake up at 5 in the morning to walk for three hours going to school every day. It was an option he desperately chose because if not he would be making charcoal and do farming for the rest of his life. His daily effort of waking up at the wee hours and walking more than 30 kilometres to school paid off as last year he got second honors in their class. His achievement was a baby step towards his goal.    

Asked about his favorite hobby, his answer was too different from other children in the lowlands. Spare time for him and his siblings meant they could go out in the forest and hunt for wild pigs. In context, that sounded fun but in real life we knew it was hard. His answer was innocent and fun as he was smiling and we did laugh too. His answer sank into our hearts as if it had sharp teeth; even in their hobbies, highland kids still think of their families—of bringing food to the table in order to survive. That was reality and it really got us. Despite the smiles in our faces, the pang in my stomach was kicking in.       

  

We went to the highlands in hopes of showing the kids the value of education, but as we went home it was us who were educated. When we were about to leave the village,  we promised John Mark one thing—we would help him as much as we could for him to continue his education and maybe one day get a degree. We don’t know how but deep inside we just believe it is possible, just like the notebooks we had collected.  

If we can help one child, we help the entire family. The smiles on their faces are enough encouragement for us to keep moving.

Today, as we celebrate our Second Founding Anniversary, we are presenting to the world our new scholar, John Mark Lozada. He is one among the few children we have been helping to reach their dreams, and we believe that it is through education. The intergeneration poverty cycle is harsh but education is the only shot we got to break the chain.  John Mark will now join Toto Jande, our scholar in Sitio Maatop, Brgy Sangke, the last village in the south of Negros.

Starting from one scholar, and now we have two, is part of our baby steps, but we hope to add more if the provision from above permits. We cannot do this on our own. We need your help to help John Mark. Today, our only kind of celebration is to share our children’s story with you as a thanksgiving to the one who brought us all together for this mission.

As I end this story, I would like to share these lines from my favorite author, Paulo Coelho taken from his book The Fifth Mountain. “A child can always teach an adult three things: to be happy for no reason, to always be busy with something, and to know how to demand with all his might that which he desires.”