Year 7 Pupil Helps Rehouse Hundreds!

During the Christmas holidays, when most of us were eating, drinking and being merry, one young man used his selfless, thoughtful head to share more than gifts and toys: Lower School pupil Josh Hamer travelled to the Philippines with his mother and her colleague to introduce a village to their new homes.

Josh was inspired by his mother’s colleague, Mr Greg Secker who founded the Greg Secker Foundation - a charity that seeks to ‘give back’ to people in need. The Foundation focuses on providing education, life skills and leadership initiatives, and aims to provide people with the tools they will need to move forward in their lives. The family of one of Mr Secker’s staff, Rosario Sanico, lost their home during Typhoon Haiyan, which prompted him to travel to the Philippines to assess what help he could offer.

In 2013, Typhoon Haiyan struck the Philippines and caused damaged amounting to over £326billion. It is the deadliest recorded typhoon to date, killing over 6300 people in the Philippines alone. More than two months after the typhoon, the last of the bodies were uncovered. Families had been ripped apart, with over 11 million human lives affected, many of those becoming homeless.

Having seen this, Mr Secker committed himself to building 100 homes to rehouse 500 people. On the Greg Secker Foundation team was Shiplake’s own Josh Hamer, who took the opportunity and offered his time and friendly character to the people of Lemery, just two hours from Iloilo City. Greg asked for a plot of land nearby which, according to Josh ‘is about the same size of the Riverside Rugby pitches’. The owner of the land, Rosario Sanico, obliged, and said ‘anything for my people’. On this land, Mr Secker, with the help of his charitable foundation, built 100 typhoon resistant homes. Phase 2 will now begin which includes a Training Centre, which will help the community by teaching them skills to enable to them to be sustainable in the future.

During his time in Lemery, Josh helped to introduce this shaken community to their new homes, played with the local children and devoted his time to help in any way he could. Last week, Josh presented a Lower School assembly in the hope that he would inspire his classmates to consider similar charitable gestures. He gave a truly inspirational report of his visit and showed a video that he made of his time there (see below). Headmaster, Mr Gregg Davies, said:

‘It’s an incredibly selfless thing to do, I’m very proud of him. It’s always great to see pupils maintaining the Shiplake Seven, even more so during their holidays!’

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