Miracles are real, and they happen everyday in the most ordinary homes in the Philippines.

The story of Imelda Tubino, a single mother of three and a former masseuse at a home spa in Parañaque City, illuminates this well. When she was still working, she used to cook all her sons’ favorite dishes for them. She knows all the fare by heart: Her eldest has a penchant for beef kaldereta, the second loves roasted chicken “Andok’s style,” and while her youngest doesn’t have a set preference, she knows he’s picky with vegetables just like his brothers.

It’s been a long time since she was able to cook her sons’ favorite food. After the home spa closed down due to the pandemic, she has been consistently looking for work; finding temporary opportunities as a house cleaner or pushing a pares cart for motorists on the side of a busy highway. Despite not having a husband to lean on during these hard times, she mentions that she has never really felt like she was alone through it all.

Her source of companionship comes from her old workmates in the home spa, whom she continued to keep in touch with even after the lockdown. They have especially looked out for one another knowing they are all unemployed for the foreseeable future. On one occasion, a kind friend with a husband working overseas bought a huge heap of groceries and divided it equally among everyone in their group. Tubino sees those moments as blessings for forming such a strong sisterhood with all the women there.

Tubino lives day by day with a short sight of what the future may hold thanks to the pandemic. Yet, she says that she still finds ways to remain grateful for the opportunities she has found with everyone she has kept close.

Although the pandemic may cause the poor to tighten their grip on the little they have at home, the stories of Tubino and three other unique people prove otherwise.

Keeping a community organized

Being part of a community means giving when you already have enough. “Sa panahon ngayon, hindi pwede maging sakim. Kung hindi, imbes na may mga grasya, hindi ka na isasali,” Tubino says.

(In these times, you can’t be selfish. If you are, you’ll be excluded instead of receiving graces.)

Keisha Uy and CJ Despuez of pagasa.ph, a civil society group that combines relief programs with activism, share how having “enough” can be a relative perception. What may seem meager to some can become an abundance to others if you know how to distribute right.

Uy and Despuez recount stories of how monetary donations they believed to be “just enough for one family” or “enough for one week” were miraculously stretched out to dozens of people in need—like a modern day multiplication of loaves and fish, Uy says.

However, this miracle was not made by a single person. It is possible thanks to whole communities led by people who are a part of it themselves. These significant accomplishments reflect the organizational power that communities hold.

In their partner communities, residents bring their own pots and pans outside to assemble their community kitchen where mothers take the helm as chefs. There, the women are able to cook beloved dishes out of the ingredients brought to them by pagasa.ph, then feed their neighbors in a systematic manner. The kids always fill their bellies first.

Skilty Labastilla, an anthropologist currently conducting field research on the lockdown coping mechanisms of the urban poor, says that organized systems like those can be seen in many different poor communities.

In the early months of the pandemic, he says that the poor used most of their savings and borrowed money to make ends meet. Although the government’s Social Amelioration Program also helped tide over the families’ hunger, one can only consume canned sardines, instant noodles, and rice for so long. The people themselves knew that these weren’t nutritious enough to consume month after month.

Manila’s Barangay Estero de Legarda crafted ways to solve this problem. Labastilla observed how the barangay partnered up with the Department of Science and Technology to make efficient use of their space: Through a community garden where families are able to plant vegetables in a small area designated for hydroponics farming.

Labastilla says that it is in these very small but organized communities where we find effective strategies that can be replicated throughout the Philippines. “It's the presence of community organizations outside of the local government that will ensure that people, the poorest of the poor, the most marginalized, get access. [...] They will ensure na uunahin [ang dapat unahin].” (They will ensure that those that should go first, will go first.)

The poor’s capacity for this “self-leadership,” Labastilla explains, challenges the popular misconception that they are helpless and fragmented.

When the poor are able to help their own, it fosters a sense of dignity within them. But while they are fostering dignity and making miracles out of the little that they have, why are they still at the risk of hunger?

The reality of miracles

When the home spa Tubino worked in closed down, she had lost her only source of income. There are blessings within her community but getting by each day is still a struggle. What used to be a budget of Php 400 a day for her whole family’s meals now needs to be stretched out for one week. To make it through each week, she says she needs to be smart with every peso she spends.

At night, she accounts for all the money she has, the money she will possibly earn at various jobs, and the money she will spend for food at the market the next day. Palengke visits must be timed well in the afternoon, when runoff produce is sold at a cheaper price. And sachets of instant coffee serve two cups now, not one.

When Tubino puts it like that, Labastilla’s current research becomes even more relevant—these miracles that have helped the poor stretch all their food and resources are actually coping mechanisms done to survive.

“No amount of help from the private sector can actually match what the nation really needs,” Uy admits. Their team at pagasa.ph and the generosity of their donors can only do so much.

The poor cannot rely on miracles alone. From their own perspectives, Labastilla, Uy, and Despuez believe that the power of the community needs to be met halfway by effective leadership from the government.

Tubino is fond of the slogan plastered on her barangay’s community pantry: “Magbigay ayon sa kakayahan, kumuha ayon sa pangangailangan.” (Give according to your ability, take according to your needs.)

It’s a saying that’s hung in community pantries all over the country. When countless people like Tubino lost their jobs, those words were unexpected glimpses of hope that told more about our true spirit beyond rundown narratives of selfishness and survival. It embodies the tightly-knit values that made miracles possible and kept communities together for so long.

But at the end of each day, it shouldn’t take them a miracle to survive in the first place.