LYNNWOOD — Christine Umayam couldn’t forget the poverty she saw in the Philippines during a family vacation a few years ago.
She couldn’t let her life in the United States return to its usual course. She wanted to do more.
Umayam quit her corporate job and in 2007 founded Child United, a nonprofit organization to help children in developing countries get an education and escape poverty.
Child United has since helped thousands of people, shipping packages to the Philippines, Haiti and Dominican Republic. Volunteers have provided books and computers to rural schools, toys and clothes to children in poor families and relief funds to those recently affected by natural disasters.
“This really started out of my house,” Umayam said. “And we’ve helped thousands of people so far.”
Umayam knows exactly where the help is going. She has been travelling to the Philippines, where she has family, to distribute the donations. She also has local partners in other Child United destinations.
Umayam and a group of volunteers gathered outside her Lynnwood home on Sunday to sort and pack donations into boxes.
The boxes — there were dozens of them on the ground — were filling up quickly as volunteers carefully and tightly packed clothes and shoes, toys and other children’s things.
“We know we are not going to end poverty, but we can help one kid at a time,” said Jolyn Hohnstein, a volunteer and a friend of Umayam’s.
Hohnstein, of Auburn, came with her teenage sons, Ethan and Eddie, to help out with the packages.
It’s good for Filipino-American children to build a connection to the country their parents once came from, said Larcy Douglas, president of the Tacoma-based Pilipino American Youth Organization. Several teenagers from her group came to help as well.
“They think: ‘Hey, this could have been me. There’s still millions of people back there who are living it,” Douglas said.
Umayam used her professional skills to build a website and spread the word about her organization on the Internet. She and others get no salaries from Child United. She gained support quickly, but getting the nonprofit off the ground was tough.
“It’s really hard to get people’s support if they don’t know your story,” Umayam said. But once they learned her story, local businesses, schools and nonprofits were there to help.
Katya Yefimova: 425-339-3452; kyefimova@heraldnet.com.
How to help
To learn more about Child United, volunteer or make a donation, go to www.childunited.org.
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