After job-swap show, Irishman pledges help to Filipinos

Street cleaner wants to help family who took him in.

Manila:  An Irish Catholic street cleaner, who was filmed by a TV documentary crew as he temporarily swapped his job in the Irish capital for the poverty-stricken Philippines, has pledged to spend the rest of his life helping the struggling family he lived with.

Mark Crosbie, a street cleaner with Dublin City Council, told how his perspective on life has changed forever since he spent a few days cleaning the streets of the Philippines' densely populated capital, Manila, for an Irish TV documentary, Toughest Place To Be, Catholic News Service reported.

As part of the program, the 47-year-old father-of-two stayed with the family of a local street cleaner, Mel Macaereg, who earns $15 a week to support his wife and six children.

But since filming ended in January, Crosbie has maintained weekly contact with his host family and has set up a charity drive to raise funds for the wider community that took him in.

"The poverty I saw over there was on a level I'd never seen before, and I struggled to adjust to life back in Dublin when I came back. I was scarred by it, but it was a positive scar,” Crosbie said.

Source: UCAN