"The social halls in the village are used for youth meetings," Juan explains, "for community meetings, for any social function by a particular family, or a group of families. We make it available for community use.

"About 10 years ago there was a typhoon that damaged the beach social hall, the one that we have right now. FEMA gave money for repair, but didn’t want that building repaired because they didn’t want to take the responsibility of coming back after every typhoon and repairing the building. They felt it wasn't safe. So they gave all of this money and the government was to find matching funds and build another building somewhere.

"Finally the Tanapag Action Group went and started negotiating until we finally came across a company that would accept that amount of money, plus some additional money that from donations. So we started working with the FEMA representative here to get this hall built. When it was done, the Mayor claimed it, but not without a fight, and we demanded that it be turned into a youth center for the children here in the village who needed help.

"There are families that couldn’t afford computers for their kids to do their assignments—we make that available to them here. And I was fortunate, my niece works at Verizon, so I asked her for internet services for free, so we got internet service for free. We got five computers plus telephone lines all donated.

"The Center is open from 7:30 to 4:30 for everybody to use. Kids come and use the computer to do their homework, and then at 4:30 they close it for an hour so the caretaker can go home and eat, and then they’ll open it up from 8:00 until 9:00 at night for students to come and get tutored or to do homework through the Internet."

Pacific Worlds > CNM: Tanapag > Onwards > Village