A visionary friend from San Diego California, Jacob “Jake” R. Quimpo, enlightened me with his philanthropic project—the Widow's Mite Village. The concept comes from the Biblical allusion in Luke 21: 1-3which tells of Jesus commending a widow for giving in the temple treasury all she had to live on. In this project, the donors are encouraged to donate their “two bits”—a slang term used in the 1950's to connote what the widow offered. The octogenarian visionary of this undertaking commits most of the money earned from his books – The Odyssey of the Philippine Blue Seal, and God's Humorous Tales Book 1 and Book 2—available from www.amazon.comand www.barnesandnoble.com. He also plans to give to the charity profits from his business ventures. This is indeed storing up true treasures. The innovative vision is for the homeless families in the Philippines under the leadership of Jake's brainchild, Life Care International Foundation Trust (LIFT) with the cooperation of other international charitable organizations. LIFT's objective is to create employment opportunities and increase the incomes of the extremely poor rural residents. The foundation's approach has proved to be an effective alternative to formal financial institutions in the Philippines; it provides credit and savings facilities for the rural poor, particularly women, through self-help groups. Forty acres of land was donated for the envisioned village. The project does not just provide shelters for the poor; it will teach the beneficiaries skills to be self-supporting. Once the village takes form, LIFT will start the livelihood program where charitable organizations will come in with equipment to contribute. For instance, as Jake said, “The U.S. Rotarians will secure a generator from a U.S. corporation as donation and ship the donated item to the counter-part Brother Rotarians in the Philippines”. Then Rotarians in the Philippines will take care of the paper work from all governmental agencies and deliver the equipment for installation.

“Each participating charitable organization,” as Jake averred, “will work independently as they handle their owned assigned project.” The vision about building the village presented itself when Jake visited the Philippines for treasure-hunting expeditions. He was confronted by an 83-year-old widow who asked him what he would do ifhe were successful in treasure-hunting. His reply: “There are a lot of poor people in this world especially in the Philippines and I could build them a village and call it Widow's Mite Village with the help ofmy brothers and sisters in Christ.” In his sunset years, thephilanthropist wants to speed up the realization of this legacy. Jake is a Korean war veteran and a Filipino-American who hailed fromthe province of Aklan. While working with the US Navy, he also becamea barber to his shipmates to earn a student visa in the US. Afterserving in the Navy, he earned his student visa, then took Bachelor ofArts in Social Work which he finished at San Diego State University. He did not work in line with his course after graduation. Having foundhis niche in business, he became a financial planner and insuranceagent for 24 years before he established his own company—the GoldemasFinancial Group, Inc. He said he was called “FLIP”, which in the1950's, meant Friendly, Loving, Intelligent Pinoy. (The author is a management and research professor and visual artist.He has published his researches in peer-reviewed internationaljournals and presented his papers in a number of conferences includingthree international conferences. He is a member of the editorialboards of two journals run by the American Research Institute forPolicy Development. This time, he is seeking for a new milieu for hiscareers. His email is lucelllarawan@gmail.com .)