MANILA, Philippines - Long before Bill Gates coined and believed in the term ?creative capitalism??a mechanism where big businesses are expected to direct nobler duties toward the poor?has this bank been doing it.

In fact, the first time I heard of Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC), I was on this tiny islet south of Palawan, rescuing dugongs and helping reinforce the seaweed livelihood of the inhabitants of Green Island: seafaring folk without much access to the mainland, and who used to think seacows were scrumptious, and more so, profitable.

The bank was one of the WWF-Dugong project?s biggest benefactors, and I remember looking at the group of squeaky-clean HSBC employees who arrived at the island one day (employees make regular immersion trips to project sites as volunteers), me with my scabbed legs, burnt epidermis and bare feet thinking how neat it was: this huge, international bank was visibly reaching out, trying to even out the great divide by spreading the benefits of capitalism to those it has essentially left behind.

Iloilo

Five years later I find that HSBC?s moral compulsion remains. Last weekend I was in this tiny municipality in Iloilo, gorging on fresh shrimp and molo soup with 20 enthusiastic HSBC bankers/volunteers, in the happy company of huge?albeit unconventional?families that the corporation has helped bring, and keep together.

HSBC has pledged $75,000 over three years as funding support for a project borne out of a man?s conviction that orphaned, abandoned and neglected children could only be genuinely and effectively taken care of within a real home.

Such was Dr. Hermann Gmeiner?s philosophy, and today there are 380 children?s villages called SOS villages operating under this vision?seven of them right here in the Philippines.

Real household

Zarraga in Iloilo is home to one such village. It is a constellation of 12 family homes composed of eight-10 children each who treat each other like real siblings, and loved by women who have dedicated their lives to being their mothers.

Each house operates as a real household?there is a monthly budget allotted for each child?s food and clothes, and if there is enough money left, the family can go on swimming trips to the local pool. The children all go to school for free, and eventually leave the house after they graduate from college, usually before they turn 24.

The HSBC volunteers spent a whole day interacting with the SOS families, presenting an interactive environmental skit (chunks of it deftly translated into Ilonggo) for the kids and planting vegetables as part of a larger SOS program called Family Strengthening, in which other children from surrounding barangays are also given educational aid.

In all, SOS Village, Iloilo helps close to a thousand children?129 of which are living in the family homes.

?We do not want to be called an orphanage,? SOS Iloilo?s Village director Renie Masongsong, says. ?We?re families.?

Indeed, during the course of the program, several different kids had clasped his hands, calling him ?Papa.?

Near the end of the night I fell into talk with one of the SOS mothers, Noralyn Pagunsan, 41, who?s been living with her 10 children for two and a half years now. In November she will be back in Manila for another round of rigid training?a series of psychological and educational classes which teach these mostly single and childless women real familial and maternal issues.

She told me she was happy, that she had SSS and health benefits, free medicine, day-offs and food allowances. She easily confided how she probably would not get married anymore?she was married to her family.

She beamingly introduced me to her kids: the eldest who was going to take up Tourism next year, then Josephine, who is 15 and is starting to get a lot of suitors (Mama Nora?s quite worried about that), and I met 5-year-old Eric, her bunso, who was seated in her lap the whole time as she wiped at his mouth with a piece of tissue.

As the trip?s official photographer pointed out, all the kids exuded a quiet confidence not common in most orphans: no one was clingy, and no one painfully shy.

Before I left, Josephine was telling me the story of how she ended up in the village. She was originally from Manila. I asked her if she resented being brought to Iloilo. She doesn?t. She?s studying (although still uncertain what course to take for college), she has friends, she has a home and most of all, a real family.

Soon she?ll be looking for a job and raising her own kids, perhaps raising them with the same love and conviction her SOS family is giving her now.

Couldn?t think of a better investment than that.