Annually, Social Enterprise Development Partnerships Incorporated (SEDPI) celebrates Christmas season through a series of activities that aim to give back to communities in simple yet meaningful ways. SEDPI’s 2011 Christmas celebration was started with an afternoon spent with the orphans and street children living at Tanglaw House of the Virlanie Foundation. The activity – which was held last December 15 – was attended by a total of 43 children with age range of 6 to 12 years old. The afternoon was filled with games and dance numbers which all the kids and the staff members of SEDPI enjoyed. As gifts, SEDPI provided the children with school supplies and other basic needs such as rice and toiletries.
The celebration continued with a Christmas party for the staff. It was held last December 16 at the Phillip’s Sanctuary in Antipolo. Phillip’s Sanctuary is a nature park that features amenities for relaxation and team building activities for organizations. The staff happily participated and finished all the challenging games and team building activities conducted by the official facilitators of the sanctuary. The Christmas party was highlighted by the annual exchange of gifts between the staff members.
The tragedy that struck Northern Mindanao barely a week before Christmas dampened the spirit of the holiday season. Typhoon Sendong ravaged the cities of Cagayan De Oro and Iligan as well as other neighboring municipalities. It left on its wake thousands of dead bodies, hundreds of missing individuals and billions of properties destroyed. SEDPI reached out to the victims through donating PhP10, 000 to the Ateneo Disaster Response and Management (DReaM) Team. The donations were primarily used for relief efforts for the victims. In the same way, SEDPI also donated PhP20, 000 to Ateneo DReaM Team when typhoon Pedring devastated Northern and Central Luzon last September, 2011.