Health Services & Relief to Farmers & Workers in Ph!

Sustainably support Liyang Network's campaigns in direct partnership with grassroots community organizations and initiatives in Mindanao working to meet immediate and long-term needs. 100% of our proceeds go towards holistic programs for Lumad, agri-worker, and peasant communities in Mindanao, Philippines. These communities have been especially impacted by poverty, hazardous working conditions, toxins, climate change, militarization, and now the COVID pandemic. 

With your support, we will continue to bring mobile medical & diagnostic lab clinics into these communities for early detection of diseases and viruses, maternal and infant care, and the distribution of basic medicines and vitamins. In response to rampant misinformation about health, especially COVID, we will carry out information drives to disseminate culturally relevant, accurate education in these marginalized communities.

Supporting People’s Right to Comprehensive Health & Healthcare 

Throughout 2021, all donations will go toward our Health Campaign, which works with grassroots organizations in Mindanao to address the ongoing crises of climate calamity, COVID-19, and development aggression in Mindanao's Indigenous, peasant, and agri-worker communities through the empowerment of pro-poor, pro-people health programs. Since January 2021, Liyang has worked to raise awareness about environmental health issues faced by Filipinos with a focus on the impacts on Lumad, peasants and agri-workers (banana, pineapple, and sugarcane) in Mindanao. 

Climate change has exacerbated the already precarious situations of rural communities in the Philippines. These communities are the least responsible, yet most affected by the increasing frequency and severity of extreme weather events like typhoons and earthquakes. Meanwhile, large-scale extractive industries contributing to climate change and ecological destruction are displacing them from their land and damaging their health by exposing them to countless hazards:

• Commercial industries such as mining and plantation agriculture degrade the environment via deforestation and pollution.

• Corporate agriculture and massive construction projects are linked to respiratory diseases, aplastic anemia, thyroid cancer, cleft lip and palate other fetal abnormalities, and spontaneous abortions.

Acting in defense of the environment is also hazardous -- in 2020, the Philippines was the second deadliest country in the world for land and environmental defenders.

All proceeds will go toward comprehensive health services for Lumad, peasants and agri workers suffering from poverty, lack of access and the privatization of the healthcare industry. Funds will also support frontline healthcare workers who provide these services in Bukidnon. 

More About Beneficiaries:

Lumad Communities 

Lumad, meaning native of the land, collectively refers to the 18 ethnolinguistic groups of Mindanao, Philippines. They face the most concentrated levels of poverty in the country, and are subject to cycles of forcible displacement due to man-made and natural disasters. A majority of Lumad families are forced to survive on $1 a day. 

Peasant Farmers & Plantation Workers

Peasants are farmers who do not own the land they till. Although they make up a majority of the Philippine population, the peasant sector is the most vulnerable to food insecurity, resource grabbing, and human rights violations.

When Lumad communities and peasants are displaced from their lands, they are often left with no other option but to work on the plantations that displaced them in order to provide for themselves and their families.

On plantations, workers receive little pay and no benefits while performing arduous tasks that expose them to hazardous chemicals with no protective equipment provided. In Mindanao, diseases common among peasants, Lumad, and agri-workers are linked to poverty and preventable. Yet, health services are inaccessible to these marginalized rural communities, because they are often too far to travel and too expensive.

Why should we trust Liyang Network?

Liyang is an international advocacy network that was born out of the request of Indigenous communities in Mindanao. Since then, Liyang Network has worked on the ground and internationally to directly support communities in the Philippines with their immediate and long-term needs. We have…

• Directly supported the alternative education provided to 200 Indigenous youth in evacuation centers

• Assisted in providing health, legal and campaign resources for Indigenous leaders, students and community teachers under threat

• Provided relief & rehabilitation to 10 communities impacted by covid-19 and Typhoons Rolly and Ulysses

• Collaborated with 500+ advocates of Indigenous peoples, land, environmental and human rights through educating the international community on their victories and struggles through workshops, lectures, dialogues, community discussions and campaign work.

• Made an impact on over 9100 individuals from marginalized communities in the Philippines—an average of 14 people every day!