Rise Up Tanauan: Helping the Taal Volcano Evacuees

Hello everyone,

My name is Jan Patrick Alca. I am a Finance Payment Specialist and a remote resource that is based in Tanauan City, Batangas in the Philippines. This project is a joint initiative with my sister Stephanie Alca, who is who is an OFW (Overseas Filipino Worker) in Singapore.

The Taal Volcano Eruption

At around 1 p.m. on January 12, 2020, Taal Volcano, the second most active volcanos in the Philippines, erupted. A phreatic eruption spewed ash up to 14km high with the ashfall reaching CALABARZON, Metro Manila, and parts of Southern Luzon. Its last recorded eruption, which was also phreatic in nature, was some 43 years ago.

Shown in this photo are the evacuees cooped up in Tanauan City evacuation area. Evacuees are from municipalities within the 14km radius from the volcano's crater namely, Laurel, Agoncillo, Talisay, and others.

I'm are currently located 22km from the crater of Taal volcano. Most of my family and relatives were born, raised and live in Tanauan. This initiative is to help me and my sister in Singapore, raise funds so we can buy the very urgent necessities for our fellow Batangueños who evacuated from their homes due to the volcanic eruption.

This is our main goal and we know that doing this will help affected families. Any amount will have an impact on all evacuees. With the help of my family, we constantly coordinate with evacuation center volunteers to know what goods are needed in evacuation across the city.

Our family with close friends has donated blankets, towels, basic toiletries & detergent to St. John The Evangelist Catholic Church (Mabini Avenue, Tanauan City, Batangas, Philippines 4220 | 35P3+C8 Tanauan, Batangas) which they disseminated across evacuation Centers.

The affected people still need some help

With the help of family and friends, we were able to come up with funds to start our reach out program. We were able to provide 100 pairs of blankets and bath towels, 425 kg sacks of rice, and 100 packs of basic toiletries (bag with bath soaps, feminine wash, and detergent).

The funds that we will get from this fundraising project will focus on continuously supporting the basic needs of the families while still in the evacuation centers. We also hope to help them with a starter pack with basic necessities that will assist them in starting over when they go back to their homes. As of this writing here are the figures of affected areas and head count of citizens who are still in the evacuation areas: 90,533 families in Batangas, Quezon, Laguna and Cavite; 37,445 families who are taking temporary shelter in 488 evacuation centers; and 38,102 families who are outside evacuations centers still needs welfare assistance.

Our Goal

We mainly choose Airtripp Funding services so our friends and family can help with the funding with ease and it's also easier to share our initiative in social media networks. Our main goal is to help at least 1000 families as a start, then continue helping more should we still have the funds to support them.

Having said all this, we have projected the expenses where the funds will go:

Updates

Currently, the Taal volcano is still at Level 4 warning. Although the volcano remains calmer as days passes bay, we are still cautioned because there are still a lot of volcanic activities happening inside the crater. Yesterday, January 24, 2020, 150 families where already asked to go back to their houses, but all of them still doesn't know how to go back to their normal lives since their sources of income, like their crops, fish ponds, poultry livestock, all affected, if not gone.