Facebook photo: life transformer
While others are busy on Facebook uploading selfies, posting callow and mute status messages, smart people are using it as a platform for making the world a better place.
Cabrera and his mother, Espinosa have been living in her employer’s mini-grocery store since their home was burned by fire five years ago.
Espinosa said she earned just 80 pesos R19 a day working at the store and as a domestic helper for the store’s owners in their nearby home. She gets the income by selling cigarettes and candy on the streets of Mandaue, an urban centre on Cebu Island. Cabrera has used McDonald’s outlet as his study nook as it was close to his grocery store home.
Cabrera’s father died in 2013 due to severe diarrhoea, said Espinosa, who has three older children, all married and living separate from her.
She described the boy as a tenacious child with a single-mined focus on getting an education. “He is a very studious and indefatigable boy… he would insist on going to school even without his lunch money because I have no money to give, He always tells me: ‘Mama, I don’t want to stay poor. I want to reach my dreams’.” Espinosa said
Espinosa said, aside from the cash, school supplies and scholarship offer that would guarantee his education through college, people had given school uniforms and a reading lamp.
The local church and government social welfare office had also received aid on his behalf.
“He has become a symbol of poor slum boys in the city who can’t study because they don’t have electricity.” Living on less than a dollar a day
Despite strong economic growth in recent years, roughly one quarter of the Philippines’ 100-million people still live on less than one dollar a day, and giant slums dominate all major cities. Many people sit on the street and hope that someone will feel sorry for them and give them what they want but the truth of the matter is nowadays it’s not about feeling empathy for other people but it’s all about getting up and doings things for yourself, people gets inspired when they see someone who has nothing, working hard to achieve their dreams.
The funny part is those who are privileged enough
“I was in awe. While other street kids were begging for alms, he was studying.”
Many who reposted Cabrera’s photo on their Facebook profiles agreed.
“I hope he makes it because in my book, he is a legend,” Alan Butler said on his Facebook page.
“Great story because thanks to this picture, his life will change. Sad, because it is one of the thousands, probably millions who live in these circumstances,” wrote Christoffel Sneijders.
