| Photo by Nikko Balanial on Unsplash
Juan dela Cruz and 20 of his neighbors in a remote village in southern Mindanao are rejoicing. They sell their mangoes every year to an ethical enterprise, which pays high prices; they also receive additional payments and other benefits. Before, traders rejected their mangoes because they were too small. Then the enterprise bought almost all its mangoes at fair prices and dried them. The farmers then invested their bonus earnings in small enterprises such as piggeries, chicken farms, and sari-sari stores, helping them overcome poverty.
What is urgently needed in countries like the Philippines — where inequality is high — is the practice of fair trade principles. Implementing these principles helps people organize themselves into farmers’ associations and secure fair prices for their products. Together, they protect the environment, help educate people, ban child labor, go organic, and promote a healthy lifestyle and human rights. To end social injustice, government officials must follow fair trade principles and serve the people, not exploit them. To help people overcome poverty and hunger, we need to empower them; overcome their fears, lack of self-confidence, and feelings of inferiority; and stand for social justice and against exploitation.
People experiencing poverty must stop relying on politicians for favors and financial assistance, since these officials are paid with tax dollars. Suppose development for people with low incomes and an end to inequality are to be real and meaningful. In that case, there has to be a strong and well-organized national movement for social and economic justice that challenges the rich to curb their greed for unlimited personal and corporate growth and profits, and redirects them to work for meaningful human development and to espouse social responsibility.
Government officials must be persuaded to serve the people, not the interests of powerful corporations. Together, people, the government, the rich, and socially responsible corporations can build a more just society. Their goal must be to lift more than 17.5 million Filipinos out of humiliating, crushing poverty and hopelessness.
There are good, wealthy people who work for social transformation and to end poverty and hunger. But they are not enough. For some, national transformation and an end to poverty are considered unreachable ideals or hopeless dreams because they call on the rich to share their wealth with the poor in a sustainable way. But will they have the necessary change of mind and heart for this?
In the New Testament, when Jesus of Nazareth challenged a wealthy young man to share his riches with the poor, but the man could not, Jesus said: “It is easier for a camel (or rope) to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the Kingdom of God.” Many rich people worship money, and they don’t believe in a God that is unselfish love, compassion, justice, and truth personified.
Blessed are the rich and all who have feelings of concern, understanding, solidarity with the poor, and dedicate their wealth and even their lives to do good and end human suffering. There are an estimated 12,800 millionaires, 12 billionaires, and 70 individuals with a net worth of at least $100 million in the Philippines, according to a Henley & Partners Private Wealth Migration report in 2025. If even a few of them focus on alleviating poverty, they could save millions of people from great hunger and suffering. Their lives would be worthwhile and have great value if they do so.
“The causes of poverty and hunger lie in the country’s political structure, where the super-rich virtually hold the electoral process captive. A few hundred families are managing a nation of 115.8 million people. But there is always hope. … enough rich people might ,,, dedicate themselves and their wealth to serving humanity, like Microsoft founder Bill Gates.”
Beyond the Philippines, 5 billion people in the developing world are suffering from hunger without access to humanitarian aid, like those in Sudan. Approximately another 575 million people will suffer extreme poverty by 2030, the year the United Nations and rich nations said poverty would be eradicated. These are just empty promises. If every empty promise were a sack of rice, we could feed the world.
In 2024, about 2.59 million Filipinos were unemployed and unable to feed their families. By August 2025, there were 2.03 million unemployed, the Philippine Statistics Authority said. A Social Weather Stations survey in September 2025 found that 41 percent of Filipino families rated themselves “food-poor,” meaning they were unable to eat a full, healthy meal a day. The OCTA Research group has said in a report that approximately 11.3 million Filipino families suffered from food poverty. A UN Children’s Fund report from 2024/2025 revealed that around 18 percent (or 2 million) children in the Philippines suffered from severe food poverty, often eating primarily starch with little or no protein. That’s where “pag-pag” food comes in to help. The leftovers from the dining plates of the rich in fine restaurants are collected, recycled, and recooked and shared with the hungry poor.
The causes of poverty and hunger lie in the country’s political structure, where the super-rich virtually hold the electoral process captive. A few hundred families are managing a nation of 115.8 million people. But there is always hope. Enough rich people might have a change of mind and heart, and work for the common good and dedicate themselves and their wealth to serving humanity, like Microsoft founder Bill Gates.
Another source of change is possible through the emergence of a new generation of educated young people committed to human rights and social justice, and filled with compassion for the poor. These people are moved by the hunger, social injustice, and inequality plaguing more than 17.5 million impoverished Filipinos. They want to change it, but how?
As David Boyd, the former UN special rapporteur on human rights and the environment, said: “Powerful interconnected business and political elites — the diesel mafia — are still becoming wealthy from the existing system. Dislodging this requires a huge grassroots movement using tools like human rights and public protest, and every other tool in the arsenal of change-makers.”
Filipinos’ peaceful grassroots movement for social justice and human rights is growing as hundreds of brave, socially committed, environment- and human rights-focused Filipinos sacrifice themselves in the service of the poor. They are inspiring many more and keeping alive the faith by doing good and opposing wrongdoing against people with low incomes, believing in Jesus of Nazareth that they can and will win. With that kind of faith, how can they fail in due time to change the Philippines for the better?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Shay Cullen is a Missionary priest from Ireland, a member of the Missionary Society of St. Columban, and the Founder and President of Preda Foundation since 1975.
