BARANGAY MANGGAHAN, Philippines - A handful of volunteers from the Born Again Christian Church located in Barangay Manggahan helped a combined team of Philippine and U.S. Army engineers build the barangay’s new community center.
The prefabricated building will serve as the main office for barangay officials and a day care for the local residents.
“Development of the community is a core part of our ministry,” said Born Again Christian Church’s Pastor Amamias Custodio. “This new building will help our community so much. It’s only right that we come out and help build it. Plus, it’s fun to work with the engineers and be a part of the progress.”
Twenty-five volunteers came out to help the combined team raise the new community center’s 25-foot walls.
According to the site’s Officer-in-Charge Army 1st Lt. Brock Chavez from the Alaska-based 56th Engineering Company, the volunteers helped push the team ahead of schedule.
“Everything they’ve helped with has been gold,” said Chavez. “We have Filipinos as part of our crew, so communication was easy, and they are extremely skilled at construction. That also made our job easier. We are two days ahead of schedule.”
Teamwork shared between the combined team and the volunteers was compared by Army Sgt. Joshua Wagster to a basketball team. Each person has their role, he said, and everyone worked together.
“Over the course of the work, we built a great rapport,” said Wagster. “It was great to have these guys out here.”
The community center is one of seven engineering civic action projects (ENCAP) being performed by Joint Civil Military Operations Task Force (JCMOTF) units in support of exercise Balikatan 2013.
Balikatan is an annual Philippine-U.S. bilateral exercise.
Humanitarian assistance and training activities enable the Philippine and American service members to build lasting relationships, train together and provide assistance in communities where the need is the greatest.
Date Taken: | 04.09.2013 |
Date Posted: | 04.11.2013 05:49 |
Story ID: | 104995 |
Location: | PH |
Web Views: | 267 |
Downloads: | 0 |
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