In July, Metro Manila was reeling from three typhoons battering the city with nonstop rains when a plea for help reached the Mandarin Service of Radio Veritas Asia (RVA).
“We need rice for food and detergent for washing clothes and cleaning,” a staff member said quietly, his voice breaking. His own home, like many others near the RVA compound, was inundated.
Moved by both the need and the words of Jesus, “Whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me” (Mt 25:40), the Mandarin Service Charity Desk, under the leadership of Fr. Francis Han Yanguang, launched two outreach drives. On the 22nd, the desk’s volunteers distributed rice, canned goods, biscuits, and cleaning supplies to 62 families in Barangay Commonwealth. Just days later, on the 26th, a second group of volunteers brought rice and eggs to 50 more families in the same barangay. By the 29th, the team was delivering school bags, notebooks, and pencils to children at West Fairview Elementary School.
In early August, the office partnered with friends of Fr. John Mi Shen, current Programme Director of Radio Veritas Asia and founder of the Mandarin Charity Desk. In a beautiful Sunday afternoon event marked by prayer, singing, and dancing, the Chinese donors distributed Jollibee meals, T-shirts, candies, and grocery packs to over 150 children and 60 families. The guests were personally guided through the neighborhood, seeing firsthand the cramped huts, lack of electricity and water, and the resilience of families determined to survive.
These recent relief efforts are part of a much larger, longer story, one that began more than a decade ago with a single, hesitant step.
Invisible Wall
When Fr. John Mi Shen arrived at Radio Veritas Asia (RVA) in 2004 as the Mandarin Service talent, he was warned not to venture into the slum community on the western side of the campus. Home to about a hundred families living in cramped tin-roof structures, the area was described to him as “dangerous.” He heeded the advice, avoiding even a glance in that direction, and passed the same warning on to newcomers in his team.
It would take a challenge during an Advent retreat a decade later to break that invisible wall.
A Call to Charity
In 2014, the late Argentine priest Fr. Luciano, then incardinated in the Diocese of Novaliches, led the RVA staff in a retreat during Advent. “He told us,” Fr. John recalled, “‘Stand anywhere in Metro Manila and count six meters in each direction, you will find someone in urgent need.’”
Taking the words literally, Fr. John stood outside the Saint Joseph Building and counted six meters in each direction: the guardhouse in front, a good subdivision behind, his office to the right, and to the left, the very slum he had been avoiding for ten years.
“I felt the Lord telling me, ‘Go and see,’” he said. Still nervous, he asked then-Filipino Service Coordinator Fr. James to accompany him and his team, bringing along a camera.
What they found shocked them. Families of eight sleeping in 4 square-meter huts, roofs leaking; animals being raised inside small houses; children with mosquito bites, skin infections, and empty stomachs. “It was my first time seeing such conditions up close,” Fr. John said. “How do all of you sleep in it?” Fr. John asked a mother of four children. “We take turns, Father!”
The First Christmas Wish Project
It was Advent, and the team noticed the many children running around. They decided to ask them about their Christmas wishes. The answers were both simple and heartbreaking: a toy doctor’s kit, a basketball, a pair of shoes, and one girl’s dream for “a house that does not leak.”
The team collected 100 wish lists, calculating that each dream would cost about $30. Using RVA’s WeChat platform, which then had 80,000 followers, and support from Mass-goers, they raised more than enough within 34 hours. They extended the project to 160 children.
That first Christmas outreach planted the seeds of what would become the Mandarin Service Charity Desk, which Fr. John founded with a guiding principle: “We receive with our left hand, we share with our right hand.” No savings, no accounts, everything given is passed on immediately.
Growing Outreach and Global Support
Over the years, the Christmas Wish Project grew to serve over 350 children annually. Donors from Singapore, Canada, China, and Taiwan began visiting to personally join distribution activities, feeding programs, small livelihood support for poor families, and medical help for the sick.
The Charity Desk’s openness, letting donors see exactly where their money went, earned deep trust.
“What we get, we share,” Fr. John said simply. “We are just channels of God’s blessing and the generosity of many good hearts.”
Heaviness of love
When the pandemic hit, the Charity Desk received nearly ₱3 million in donations but could not organize physical activities. True to its principle, it shared the funds with other charities, ₱750,000 each to the Kalinga Center and the Payatas Community, a large urban poor settlement in a former garbage dumpsite area, and ₱350,000 each to the Diocese of Novaliches and the Claretian Missionaries.
Locally, Fr. John and his successor, Fr. Joseph, reached out to over 2,000 families, not just in the nearby community but also in the larger Fairview area, risking their own safety to collect and distribute rice to families under lockdown. With the help of a Metrobank contact, they secured and delivered massive amounts, eventually distributing 163 tons of rice.
“When we were in lockdown, with no one to help and people afraid, Fr. Joseph and I carried the rice sacks on our shoulders, loading, unloading, and reaching out to each family in need,” Fr. John recalled. “We had to carry them from the storage, put them in the car, and unload them, all by ourselves. We felt the weight, but it was the heaviness of love.”
Partnership with Metrobank
In 2020, Metrobank’s “Purple Hearts” Charity Desk adopted the Christmas outreach, taking over fundraising and logistics. Staff from 40 branches now prepare shoebox gifts for hundreds of children each year. This partnership freed the Mandarin Service from fundraising pressure, allowing it to focus on personal connections with the community.
More Than Aid—A Relationship
After more than a decade, the once-feared slum has become a place of friendship. During Christmas novenas, many Mass attendees now come from the area. Some of the children from the first Christmas outreach are now adults, still connected with RVA activities.
Fr. Francis, the current coordinator of the Mandarin Service, actively carries out the Charty Desk’s mission. He frequents the neighborhood often, and the children look up to him as an older brother. He teaches them, plays with them, and prays with them, bonding with both the adults and the young, affirming that the Charity Desk is more than just giving material aid; it is about building relationships.
From a step taken in trembling faith, the Mandarin Service Charity Desk has become a living witness that even the smallest acts of kindness can break walls, heal wounds, and transform a neighborhood.
