I have a lot of Filipino friends and people I cherish a lot! If you could donate to the cause that would be great!

As a Filipina who has lived here all her life, I understand and appreciate the intentions of this post. But I also have to speak up—the number of notes this has is alarming because this is quite offensive and it paints an inaccurate picture of my country. This line, in particular: "The Philippines is a Third world country. Most of the people in this country live in SHACKS MADE OUT OF TRASH”, is NOT true. 

Yes, we are a third world country. Yes, our education system may not be equal to most in the world, nor do we have decent health benefits and enough job opportunities for women nor are women treated like equals in society. Yes, LGBT virtually have no rights. Yes, corruption is so bad that you can steal billions of pesos and still not get put in jail. And there are a lot more things that make us ‘third world’.

BUT that line in particular is an exaggeration and worse, it’s implying that all those people lost their homes, all worldly possessions and all their loved ones because their houses were  made of trash.  AND THEY AREN’T. They’re made of wood and cement. A part of the population do live in shacks, that is true—BUT EVEN THOSE ARE NOT MADE OF TRASH. The typhoon was just THAT strong. A school collapsed in the area most affected, people who lived in two story cement houses still died, as well as many other houses by the sea.If anyone has been reading at least 50% of the articles that have come out, they would know all this.

They would know the story of a man who helped a lot of people in low-lying areas evacuate with his car before the storm but thought his wife would be safe in their two story cement home. She was not. [x]

They would know that a man asked his family—his wife, a 12 year old son, and a 1 year old daughter—to stay home because their house had weathered many storms in the past. They found her clutching the beam of their house’s roof, baby in one arm, child next to her. 

They would know of the school that was used as an evacuation center that collapsed because of the winds. The death count from that is still unclear.

They would know of a person who, while doing a message segment on the news (survivors get the chance to leave messages to show their relatives in other islands/cities), asked his sibling not to come back anymore because ‘everyone is dead’.  

Maybe they would have seen this.

(‘Older brother, mommy and daddy are dead. Please tell everyone. There’s no [communication] signal and electricity here’) [x]

And, on a place closer to home, even Filipinos like me who live in Luzon, in the city, will have friends from those areas. Maybe even friends who were able to afford to go to the country’s most expensive universities. Friends who they saw worrying for their family’s safety, and then for their friends and their friends family’s safety when they couldn’t be contacted at all. 

I empathize with your parents emotions. But this line (‘My parents were seriously almost on the verge of tears and almost screaming. it has got to hurt to know that the place you came from is IN SHAMBLES’) also shows you have never been here, have not seen this country, much less our housing, and have only heard stories about life here from immigrant parents. I know the intent of this post was good. I know that and I appreciate that. But please. Please think about what you post before you press the post button. Please think of how sensitive an issue this is. It hurts that 163,000+ people, most probably impressionable young adults, have seen this and taken to mind the implications of that one statement. 

It just pains me so much, when all I’ve been seeing and reading and hearing for the past four days are heartache and death about this topic (it’s literally everything on my news feed in Facebook, the news on TV, on the internet when I’m looking for reliable organizations to link to family and friends abroad; and the heartache doesn’t step even feel when actively helping, getting items to sell to raise money or sorting out relief goods; the pain and the questions how do we avoid this, how do we get the world to listen about climate change, how can we do something about it never stop.) and we’ve been trying so hard in the relief efforts, and to read something like that just makes me both angry and sad. Like people lost their lives, like people died because they couldn’t afford proper housing. Because we live in “SHACKS MADE OUT OF TRASH”. That’s not true. People died because that was one of the strongest typhoons in the past 30/40 years. That is the reason. Not because we live in shacks made of trash.

From the sibling of a friend who lived in the most affected area, “it didn’t pick anyone. the rich, the poor, everyone lost.”