Cruz | Beanne Valerie Dela

“I thought everyone lived like that,” Beanne recalls with a gentle laugh. “My mother would say, ‘If we have one cup of rice, we divide it into four. If someone has none, we divide it into five.’”

“People ask me when I’ll ‘make it big,’” Beanne says. “I tell them: I already have. I see a kid write their name for the first time. That’s big.” One of her early students, a 19-year-old named Jun, recently became the first in his family to graduate high school. He now volunteers as a junior facilitator for Sulong Kabataan. Another, a 17-year-old single mother named Lisa, learned dressmaking through Beanne’s program and now runs a small alteration shop from her home. Beanne Valerie Dela Cruz

She’s already there, at a makeshift desk under a mango tree, teaching a child to read one syllable at a time. “I thought everyone lived like that,” Beanne recalls