Ten years ago while visiting a friend in Manilla, each morning he saw two abandoned children aged five and six years old sleeping on a cardboard box outside a store.
But the children were snatched by traffickers before he work out how to help them.
The shock changed the course of his life forever.
"There was a lot of snatching going on and they were finding these kids’ bodies in dumpsters and chucked into rivers ...
"I remember it now as clear as a bell ... I said ‘I cannot turn a blind eye to this’. It’s said: evil prevails when good people do nothing."
The Transform a Community Trust was formed to support people in extreme poverty — feeding programmes, education opportunities, clean water wells and toilets were among its initiatives.
"So I ended up on Negros Island and we started running a feeding and care programme for children," Mr Steel said.
Two nearly 40m-deep wells were dug for one community to replace a well, which had been contaminated as a result of sugar cane production.
"It was soaking into the ground and it polluted their well. So they were getting around eight or nine babies a year dying from drinking contaminated water," he said.
Since the well’s installation, the school could grow vegetables to feed pupils.
Mr Steel said the trust was feeding up to 210 children every second or third day.
"We would love to do it daily, but we don’t have the money ... We often supply families with bags of rice, then they take care of the rest of the time."
His team were normally based in Dumaguete City with a higher population base and the resources to train helpers.
Change started with education, food and medical care. The educated can earn up to $20 a day, he said.
"We put a lot of kids into school. If kids don’t get educated, they can’t get employed.
"So that means that the best they can do is work in the sugar cane industry which pays about $2 for up to a 10-hour day.
Poverty was a generation cycle because families did not have the money to put their children into school to break the cycle, he said.
Parents often felt trapped. "when you’ve got a family and no way to feed them and you’re watching your kids starving ... "
Preventing sex trafficking exploitation and rescuing girls who were leased by her parents to brothels were another part of the Trust’s objectives.
"It’s an absolute disaster when you see these beautiful little 15 to 16, 17 year old girls prostituting themselves, not because they want to, but because the family needs it — all they want to do is just try and get one of their siblings educated.
"So when we are working with a family, getting their children educated — it saves that happening to the daughter.
"We find them good homes and we get them through school and medical care."
The country was void of any social welfare system, he said.
"There’s nothing to fall back on. If you don’t feed yourself — you die."
Mr Steel said the team helped where it could but the need was great.
Keeping people within their community to provide belonging and roots was important.
But at-risk families were monitored to ensure children remained safe.
"We’re seeing young people that came in when they’re 10 years old, now they’re 20."
They had good jobs — some had trained in the medical profession. "
"We can’t help everybody and you’ve got to be happy with what you can do. But because we’re donation-based, we can only really do as much as the fund that come in.
"If we’ve got funds, we can help," he said.
Anyone interested in the cause could email Mr Steel at danny steel61@yahoo.com
- By Toni McDonald
