Answering the call for help

Martin and friends spring to action in northern Cebu 4 days after Yolanda struck

Compassionate. Mitzee Martin, a teacher by profession distributes pencils and crayons to schoolchildren who were among the beneficiaries of her group’s relief drive in nothern Cebu. (CONTRIBUTED PHOTO)

Mitzee Martin of Labangon, Cebu City was busy with her graduate studies and at the same time preparing to take the Licensure Examination for Teachers when supertyphoon Yolanda wreaked havoc in November last year.

Cebuanos at the time had just recovered from the trauma brought by a killer earthquake that struck Central Visayas when the strongest typhoon to make landfall in history sliced through the central part of the country.

Horrific images of flattened houses, dead bodies and hungry children holding cardboard signs begging for food flooded television screens and the Internet.

Aid from all over were coming in, but there’s more to be done especially in northern Cebu which was overshadowed by the devastation in Tacloban.

This prompted the 26-year-old Martin to spring to action. Using the social networking site Facebook as her platform, she and her friends started their own relief drive.

“I started posting about the relief operation on Facebook hoping it would knock on the hearts of the people, and lo and behold, my families and friends started messaging me and asking me where they could send the money,” Martin, now an instructor at Cebu Eastern College, told Cebu Daily News.

Friends and relatives from as far as the United States and Germany chipped in cash until they managed to raise about half a million pesos.

After determining what will go to each relief pack, they’re planning to give away, Martin started ordering the items and had it delivered to her house. Her friends and classmates then came over and started assembling the relief packs. Each pack contained two kilos of rice, four pieces of canned food, four packs of instant noodles, toiletries and a gallon of purified water.

“We were saved (from Yolanda), so we could save them. We never needed a reason to help. We just helped,” she said.

By November 12 or four days after Yolanda, Martin and friends set off on a public bus for sitio Mabuhay in Daanbantayan, the hardest-hit town in northern Cebu, with relief packs good for 100 beneficiaries.

“We took risks. We’ve got nothing to lose,” she said.

“It was not pretty, on my way there. Two towns before my destination, children were out in the streets with placards that says, ‘We need food’. They were wet, hungry and thirsty,” she recalled.

“I felt sick that I could not help them because they were too many,” Martin added.

When they reached sitio Mabuhay, Martin found out that they were the first ones to come in with help.

“Their place was too interior. Fortunately, we were the first one to aid them,” she told CDN.

After the first relief operation, more donations came in. Martin’s group scheduled missions to  La Purisima Conception in Bogo City; sitio Pantalan in Sta. Fe ; sitio Tondo in Medellin and barangay Union in Camotes Island.

They also distributed school supplies to children in Bitoon Elementary School in DaanBantayan and Dayhagon Elementary School in Medellin.

“The experiences I had were surreal. I thought that I could only see such calamity like Typhoon Yolanda on TV, but I was there standing before something that was beyond my imagination,” she said.

Martin was thankful to her family and friends from all over the world who donated and reached out for the victims of typhoon Yolanda/Haiyan.

“They have made a difference in their lives. I am just their instrument,” she said.

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