A young girl in the town square of a utopic village in Camarines Sur, the Philippines. The new village was set up to provide shelter for the poorest of the poor in the area by the NGO, Gawad Kalinga. The houses were painted brightly and people were taught different, rudimentary skills to survive. I don't know the current state of this village or whether the Gawad Kalinga model actually worked to improve people's live, but this moment represents a time when things seemed hopeful. It was the first trip that I took alone to the Philippines at the very start of my career as a photographer with a camera borrowed from my older brother. My work has since been rooted in my relationship to the country and my family's ancestral lands.