RJ Garcia, a businessman and migrant Filipino, started the Appledrive Project in small cities and towns across the Philippines to educate families on the advantage of proper nutrition and good hygiene.
The initiative promotes the concept of healthy eating in impoverished areas around the country with the help of volunteers and donations from organizations who share the same vision.
“In 2011, while on vacation in Baler, I decided to buy hundreds of apples to give as souvenirs to elementary students,” Garcia says.
“I was surprised to discover that most of the kids there had neither eaten nor seen an apple in real life. [The apple] was a mythical fruit that they knew from the letter A on the alphabet on the blackboard. I was so inspired and touched by the kids that I decided to organize more apple drives—and that’s how this advocacy started,” he says.
Garcia’s advocacy is now gaining a reputation for being a symbol of unwavering commitment for what he considers his calling. Garcia witnessed how his family had to struggle with a lot of health issues when he was growing up: his father suffers from diabetes, his brother lost his life to heart disease and his sister battled breast cancer.
For these reasons, being healthy, particularly when it comes to diet, became a primary focus of his life. And this also inspired him to share the values of his chosen lifestyle. Apples, more than any other fruit, stood for the concept that drives his initiative. Remember: “an apple a day keeps the doctor away,” as the saying goes.
Despite this, he also knew that apples were a rather expensive fruit. Garcia recalls that as a child, they could rarely afford to eat them. The Appledrive Project also not only aims to provide underprivileged children access to the fruit, but teach them and their parents that while it may be cheaper and more convenient to buy candy, chocolate or other junk food, it is more important to eat and live healthy.
It is a simple concept that has engaged volunteers, roused the interest of corporations to lend their support and even attracted celebrities to get involved. The project continues to gain traction. To date, Garcia’s Appledrive Project has organized 113 Appledrives in various communities across the country.
For this reason, Western Union has recognized Garcia as a Western Union Hero, which he sees as an opportunity to further propel his healthy-eating awareness efforts to new heights.
“The Heroes for the Better campaign is Western Union’s way of putting the spotlight on the efforts and achievement of Filipinos around the world across various advocacies, such as: education, health, livelihood, science and technology, culture, arts, or volunteerism. These are people who have given their time, money, skill and expertise to make a positive change, and we wanted to share it to the country and to the world,” says Patricia Riingen, Western Union senior vice President for Southeast Asia and Oceania.
The Hero Wish contest, which was part of the overarching Western Union’s Heroes for Better campaign, is a social media contest that gathers votes from supporters of 25 Heroes featured in www.wuheroesforbetter.org, where the hero with the highest number of votes will receive a cash prize of $25,000.
Garcia’s Appledrive Project garnered an impressive 917,434 votes, which he credits to the support of various organizations, businesses, celebrities and networks from around the world who wanted to do what they can to campaign for the project. Garcia plans to use the cash prize to fund the Appledrive Project.
“The more people know about how much of an impact they can make at teaching kids how to eat healthily, the more people will want to get involved, and the more kids will learn about these better lifestyle options,” Garcia says.
The goal has always been to inspire more communities, not just in the Philippines but all over the world as well. Charitable organizations in Ghana, Uganda, Nigeria, Malaysia, India, Albania and Pakistan have already reached out to Appledrive Project to host similar drives in their respective countries.
And thanks to the honor and recognition of winning the Hero Wish Contest of Heroes for Better campaign, the win allows them to expand their reach.
