"Why Don't We Include the Poor in Our Dreams?"

What do you say when someone asks you about your aspirations in life? 

For many, the answer is to find well-paying jobs, own nice things, and be happy. Ironically, most studies find that once people are able afford the basic necessities of life, money and materialistic items cease to make people significantly happier. What does generate happiness is strong social relationships, and dedicating time to a cause greater than ourselves. For instance, spending quality time with family or perfecting one’s teaching curriculum out of love for the job. 

This situation is problematic, as many leading psychologists have pointed out, because people take on 60+ hour work weeks to get a promotion that they think will make them happy, only to realize 40 years later that they've been leaning their career ladders against the wrong wall. Knowing this, it is important that we align our dreams with our knowledge of how flowmotion/life awesomeness occur. One of the social entrepreneurs I met at Gawad Kalinga does just this.

Me and Cherrie Atilano (R) at GK

Cherrie Atilano is the founder of Agricool, an organization that teaches the rural poor how to farm as a means to make a living and develop useful life skills. I was introduced to Cherrie by a friend from college, Edmund Soriano, who is so nice (thanks, Edmund!). Cherrie and I met up at the Gawad Kalinga Farm, where she lives full time. She is short, Filipino, and speaks with an fierce dedication to her work. 

In 2011, Cherrie was awarded a Fulbright fellowship to pursue a masters at Cornell. However, the immediate need of the poor drew her to turn down the Fulbright to work full-time on Agricool in the Philippines. The most striking question that Cherrie shared with me from her conversations with Tito Tony was, “Why don’t we include the poor in our dreams?” After all, it is our goals and aspirations that drive the work we do, and if our dreams solely consist of fluffy jobs, it’s likely that that’s what will come to fruition in our lives. Likewise, if we include the empowerment of the poor in our dreams, it is much more likely to come to fruition, and produce happiness in the process. Hope you're dreaming big!