Lending a
Helping Hand

Can you tell us more about the event. How did the idea for it come about? Why this specific cause?

Siobhan: This was the first time PUMA Philippines have done a community engagement event and we wanted to find an initiative that could be arranged quite quickly. I found a guy who has dedicated his life to running a soup kitchen. I thought it would be better to give help to him rather than a large organisation because he struggles to get volunteers, more so than the more established organisations.

There was limited capacity in how many people we could bring with us, so we split the help over two days. I would say a third of the time was spent preparing and cooking food to give to the homeless people. The food we prepared was rice with local Filipino dishes. The food prep took about three hours and we spent probably five and a half hours on ground distributing it. We distributed in various locations around Manila.

From the photographs you can see there was a big turnout: kids, adults, even dogs. Were there any special moments from the event that you want to share?

Siobhan: There wasn’t one particular highlight, as it was all an amazing experience. It was just nice to see people’s smiles and how grateful they were. But what actually really surprised me was how calm and contained everyone was. Everyone was queuing and it was just really calm, that surprised me. Other than that there is not one particular part of it that stands out as the whole thing was an eye opener. A special moment for me was the dogs, because I’ve got a rescue dog. So I went to the shop and bought dog food!

Was there a higher demand than you expected?

Siobhan: We catered for a thousand. I think the reason that there was a lot of control was because the guy who runs the charity is very well known around these spots. So he has his people who kind of put everyone in order, and I think if we did all of that alone, it wouldn’t have been the same case, to be honest.

What was in the PUMA goodie bags?

Siobhan: There were toiletries, snacks, drinks and those sort of items. I also had volunteers who couldn’t join on the actual day in the office packing up these bags.

How many employees were involved? How did you raise awareness of the event?

Siobhan: I had a total of 23 who cooked and distributed and nine who packed the goodie bags in the office. And those 23 were split over two days.

We raised awareness of the event just through email communications. We produced something nice and catchy to to get employees and did a little survey to see who would be interested and then took it from there.

What community engagement activities have you done in the past with PUMA, in the Middle East where you previously worked, that made you want to help in the Philippines?

Siobhan: To be honest, it wasn’t actually carried out in the Middle East, it was in Africa.  A small group of us travelled there for a week to help out at a village school for under privileged children.  The huge contrast between there and the UAE, and actually seeing the poverty in person, really opened my eyes. I therefore wanted to do more for similar causes in other countries!

Are you planning to have more community engagement activities in the future?

Siobhan: Yes, for sure. Definitely. We’ll be doing something else next year. Maybe something environmental, maybe something with animals. But poverty is mainly the issue in the Philippines, and this is something we want to help tackle.