By Pearl Gumapos
Celebrated boy group BTS or Bangtan Sonyeondan has always been known for breaking records every comeback and for defying expectations.
However, behind the concerts and song releases lies a more in-depth characteristic of the members that most fail to notice–particularly the BTS members’ fondness for donating to organizations.
It’s no secret that the members of the well-known boy group donate to various organizations and charities. It’s become a tradition for a member to donate each time his birthday comes around.
It’s part of the group’s identity to participate in charitable donations.
And it has become a part of their fans’ objectives too.
Much like their idols, BTS fans or ARMY have mirrored the Korean boy group members’ efforts in charity and giving aid to those in need.
Stations around the Philippines
One fanbase in particular has pushed for creating community pantries all over the country.
ARMY Cavite Fanbase (@army_cavite) has put up “stations” or community pantries all across the Philippines.
The project started as an idea of one of the admin’s mothers.
The community pantry project started off with two stations–one located at the front of admin’s house at Windward Hills Subdivision, Cavite, while the second is located at the house of another admin at Manuelaville Subdivision, Cavite.
It then blossomed into more stations achieving a total of 13 stations.
Some stations can be found in Cavite, Las Pinas, Quezon City, Caloocan, Sampaloc, Pampanga, and Palawan.
Station two, in particular, which is located in Dasmariñas Cavite, is dedicated to BTS’ 8th anniversary.
“BTS inspires us to do more projects. We’ve done a lot of projects, we always have to make a charity project for each BTS member’s birthday, on their anniversary and ARMYs anniversary,” the fanbase said.
“More than anyone else, ARMY Cavite Fanbase is just the instrument. The real heroes here are the members of the ARMY fandom who are always willing to donate and help which is also influenced by BTS knowing that they also helped a lot of people through charities which then greatly inspired our team and fandom,” the fanbase said.
“The inspiration for the community pantry was actually my mom’s idea. She wanted to help our neighbors by giving them at least 2 kilos of rice, but many ARMY supported us and we managed to buy more goods like vegetables and groceries. We achieved 13 stations because of ARMY’s support,” they said.
Last year, the fanbase also raised a total of 450k for the victims of typhoon Ullyses. The fanbase also donated hygiene kits to the victims of a fire that broke out in their area.
For this month, ARMY Cavite Fanbase has spearheaded the “Mi Casa: Pagtulong sa mga Tahanan” which aims to aid victims of typhoons Rolly and Ullyses.
“This project is helping with the rehabilitation of different houses in Albay due to the typhoons Rolly and Ullyses in the previous year. The focus of this project is to help families get roofing for their homes,” they said.
Meanwhile, another fanbase has also spearheaded the creation of another community pantry for children.
BTS V’s SINGULARITY 3rd Year Anniversary
Part I CHARITY:
ROVING BULILIT (KID-FRIENDLY) PANTRYIn celebration when Singularity was released 3 years ago, Taehgers will be donating to @ARCSEA_Advocate ‘s BULILIT PANTRY. pic.twitter.com/NDIp4ft5My
— TaehgersPH🐯🇵🇭 (@TaehgersPh) April 28, 2021
“Our Roving Bulilit Pantry was coursed through ARCSEA (@ARCSEA_Advocate). This year they approached us for this plan they came up with, for a safer way to extend our help to the children who were adversely affected by the pandemic,” TaehgersPH (@TaehgersPh) said.
“ARCSEA started the distribution through their sidecar and van giving donations to the children in the poverty stricken area of Quezon City,” they said.
We also participated in the Roving Community Pantry of TGP Adamson University Chapter. Thank you @ARMYBayanihan for helping them as they were able to reach out to the poverty stricken area of Manila. pic.twitter.com/r2L1JnSXVx
— TaehgersPH🐯🇵🇭 (@TaehgersPh) May 23, 2021
TaehgersPH said that while the pandemic has brought about so many hardships, it won’t stop them from realizing that they have the ability to share what they have with people who are in need.
“Kim Taehyung is definitely an inspiration and how he seems to exude a grateful soul. Gratitude is a #1 virtue not only to ARMY but to everybody as well. Fanbases have the strongest influence and platform to use for goodwill, so we utilize it,” they said. -rir
