More than P122 million in cash and in kind was raised by Bayanihan Musikahan, a concert series livestreamed online on week nights in the last two and a half months.
Cash donations have exceeded P90 million while the estimated value of the in-kind donations reached P30 million.
The fund-raising project initiated by National Artist for Music Ryan Cayabyab and friends set out in mid-March aimed to address the threat of hunger amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Public support was collectively motivated by more than 150 musical artists who performed from their homes in the Philippines and overseas during the global lockdown.
The roster of musical artists included nearly the entire range of musical genre, from pop to rock to classical, from upcoming talents to top-seeded performers like Gary Valenciano, Ebe Dancel, Martin Nievera, and Lea Salonga. Broadway star Salonga guested three times in the series, the first of which raised P1.5 million in an hour.
Bayanihan Musikahan ensured precision food delivery by partnering with Philippine Business for Social Progress and the Samahan ng Nagkakaisang Pamilya ng Pantawid. The latter is a 70,000-strong urban poor network of people’s organizations.
SNPP’s veteran community leaders, among the poor themselves, drew on their long experience in community organizing and relief operations, as well as accurate databases, to carry out the last leg of deliveries to target households.
The 103,154 food packs thus far distributed in the National Capital Region and seven adjacent provinces typically included fresh vegetables and produce. PBSP innovated on old disaster relief practice in procuring supplies directly from farmers and fisherfolk cooperatives located outside the main impact zone of the contagion.
Like many other rural food producers, the farmers and fisherfolk in the Southern Cordillera, Bicol, Central Luzon, and Cebu whom PBSP contacted have been in dire straits because of the erosion of supply chains during the lockdown. The orders from PBSP using Bayanihan Musikahan funds were substantial, notably, 600 tons of freshly-harvested vegetables from Tublai, Benguet.
The Bayanihan Musikahan final concert program on May 30 was produced as a thanksgiving celebration for the generosity of the artists and the music industry, the community leaders of the urban poor, the PBSP and SNPP teams, the farmers and fisherfolk and the cooperatives, the homeless who served as repackers, and many more who collectively rejuvenated citizen action in the Philippines.
