Manong Blas – Delivering Donations

Last month I wrote about Manong Blas.  A blind 60 year old here on the island.  Officer Alamo of the PNP made a Facebook post about him and my wife and I decided to raise some money for him and his family.  I made a GoFundMe page, you can still donate at ~~Link removed – GoFundMe closed (made $500!)

I wanted people to know that I really delivered the money, so I made a short YouTube video.  The sound is terrible.  The neighbors were so loud you cannot hear any of the conversation… but that is normal here.  Especially out in the province.  That is why I live in the city – for the peace & quiet 🙂

The Pandan police have been amazing throughout this.  They delivered new mattresses, a new guitar, built a small store at their house (a sari sari), and will be setting up a bank account to manage the donations.  So I will continue to collect on GoFundMe and will wire the money to his bank.

We picked  a terrible day to go, but it is hard to plan around the typhoons.  We went to Antique for New Years and rented a van to drive us up to Pandan and back. 

It was nice to meet officer Alamo, after talking to him on Facebook over the last month.  Manong Blas, his sister, and mother were very glad to get the money we collected.  On GoFundMe we raised $190.  After GoFundMe and WePay took their fees I got $172 in the bank.  That is a little over p7,000.  I rounded it up to p10,000 ($230 USD) and spent an additional p2,000 on transportation, and about p500 on fruit.

I want to thank everyone for their help.  Especially my sister-in-law Joan for suggesting GoFundMe.  And officer Alamo deserves all the credit for getting this started in the first place!   Please feel free to go to the GoFundMe page and donate! ~~Link removed – GoFundMe closed (made $500!)

Here is the original blog post that tells about this man and all the hard work he does:

https://titotim.com/2014/12/12/manong-blas-the-amazing-old-blind-man/