March 21, 2015 – NOTING the still huge rehabilitation work that still needs to be done in areas devastated by Supertyphoon Yolanda, Filipino shipping and manning companies have donated P4.5 million to a housing project for the victims.

In a simple turnover ceremony, Capt. Emmanuel Regio, chairman of the Joint Ship Manning Group (JMG), turned over his association’s donation to SM Foundation Executive Director Debbie Sy. The donation will be used to help build the SM Cares Housing Village, SM’s flagship project to build 1,000 disaster-proof homes in areas affected by Yolanda.

JMG’s donation will be used to build the Community Center in the first SM Cares Village in Bogo, Cebu. Regio said the P4.5-million donation will only be the first tranche as his group had promised give more donations to construct the community centers in the other three SM Cares villages in the Iloilo, Palo and Tacloban City in Leyte.

JMG is an umbrella organization of maritime and manning associations in the Philippines with more than 250 shipping and manning companies as members. It brings in $5 billion in foreign-exchange earnings yearly and provides employment to over 500,000 Filipino seamen.

The construction of JMG’s community center in Bogo, Cebu, has started with its groundbreaking ceremony attended by local government officials and executives from the SM Group and JMG.

Sy said the community center will be used as a venue to make the SM Cares villages to be more sustainable by teaching the new homeowners community and livelihood-development programs to enable them to start life anew.

Regio said JMG chose to contribute to the SM Cares Housing Village project because of its track record in corporate social responsibility and community building. “Our members want our donations to be put to a worthy cause and to an organization that has a solid reputation and that is SM Cares and SM Foundation,” Regio said. “We are very happy and honored of the trust they continue to give us. This keeps us inspired to see the project through until the last family-beneficiary moves in to their new home,” Sy said.

On November 9, 2014, a year after the devastation, the first Housing Cares Village in Bogo, Cebu, was turned over to the 200 beneficiary-families. Three more villages are being built and will be turned over to 800 family-beneficiaries by July.