About LYF
Help when it's needed, and a way forward
Loving Yourself Forward (LYF) works with girls and young women from urban-poor families in Cebu City and Talisay, in the Philippines. Many are still in school. Many are already mothers. For their families, one bad week can mean no rice, a missed checkup or a girl kept home from school.
LYF does two things for them.
When something goes wrong
LYF steps in with food, medicine, a home made safe, help through pregnancy and the first months with a baby. LYF helps with what each girl or her family asks for, and staff follow up.
Moving forward
Each week LYF offers her a study session, with staff who follow each girl. From October 2026, each girl is assessed every six months, so LYF can see who is moving forward in school, in math, in health and in earning. Each girl works through Khan Academy math with LYF's staff, toward Grade 6, the level every girl should reach.
Why the girls need help
In Central Visayas, the region around Cebu, 17% of people lived below the poverty line in 2023, which means less than about ₱95 a person a day. In the urban-poor neighborhoods where LYF works, most families have no regular income at all. They survive on occasional work, begging, and help from others, and when that runs out, on the worst options: a girl depending on a man who mistreats her, or being drawn into selling sex. Many of the girls are minors, and often on their own. Philippine law bars any job under 15 and restricts work until 18, and an employer who hires a minor must protect her schooling and keep extra paperwork; with no shortage of adult workers, almost none bother. So a steady job at Metro Cebu's minimum wage of ₱582 (about $9) a day is closed to them, and the only work open to a girl on her own is the kind that harms her.
There is no cushion for a bad week. A medicine, a hospital bill or a typhoon can wipe out what a family has, and the lenders who step in, often through phone apps, charge interest that keeps them poor. Public school is free, but uniforms, projects, fares and a phone for online class are not, so when money runs out a girl is often the one kept home, sent to earn, or left to find her own way.
Many of the girls are already mothers. Across the Philippines, about 139,000 babies were born to mothers aged 10 to 19 in 2024. A young mother needs milk, diapers and checkups for her baby, and a way to keep learning so that she, too, has a way forward.
That is where LYF comes in: food when it runs short, help with school and health costs, an allowance for each week she studies, and people in Cebu who know her by name.
How LYF helps, and why this way
The basics come without conditions. Food and urgent help, such as medicine or a hospital bill, never depend on attendance or grades. In a large study in Malawi, girls given cash with no conditions married and became pregnant less often during the program than girls whose cash depended on going to school: the money kept coming for those who left school. The weekly allowance is the part tied to effort, paid for each week she studies.
Math at each girl's own level. The aim is for each girl to work up from the math she can already do, not from her school grade, toward Grade 6. This approach, Teaching at the Right Level, developed by Pratham in India and tested in randomized trials by J-PAL researchers, has produced some of the largest learning gains of any rigorously evaluated education program.
Public help first. Staff help families claim what they are entitled to: PhilHealth, the public health insurance, for hospital care; school aid; city services. LYF then pays the gap, so each dollar given goes further. When Angela needed surgery, PhilHealth covered much of it, Eushen walked her family through the application, and LYF paid the rest. Angela's story
Listening to the girls. The girls' own words, and their assessments every six months, decide what LYF keeps doing and what it changes.
How the help works
A week at LYF
The study session
Every week, online, for the girls in LYF's program: 48 girls in October 2026. Many sessions teach one practical thing and end with a short review. Girls who attend get an allowance of ₱250 a week, about $4. Each girl spends it on what her family lacks most that week: usually food, sometimes medicine, school supplies or the water or electric bill. LYF trusts her to know.
The group activity
Most weeks: 75 girls came in mid-October. Each takes a theme and answers it, often in a short video of herself: a word for who she wants to be this year, what she would change if she could go back, a letter to her younger self. Above, some of the words they chose.
Food for families
Rice and groceries for the girls' families. From August 2025 to May 2026 this ran every weekend with Philippine Teen Challenge, a Cebu organization, which paired it with counseling and mentoring. Since then LYF has run the food distribution itself.
Help that cannot wait
Medicine, checkups and surgery, diapers and milk for babies, school costs, a small business, and once this year a whole house. Their stories
Young mothers
Help through pregnancy and the first months
Many of the girls are young mothers or expecting. LYF helps them through the pregnancy and the first months: rice and groceries, diapers and powdered milk, medicine and checkups. In September 2026, 11 young mothers and mothers-to-be were in LYF's maternal support, and 4 had been helped through birth since May.
Why LYF exists
Patrick's story
I didn't plan to stay in the Philippines. Initially, I came here to set up a call center for a business. But the more time I spent here, the clearer it became that this is where my heart belongs: the sharing, the joy, and the resilience in the face of hardship. The way people accept differences, welcome others, and treat them better than themselves, even when they have so little.
Over time, I started seeing the patterns of need in the friends I made. During COVID, I saw the devastating impact of poverty on families and young people. I witnessed teens making heartbreaking decisions just to survive. I helped where I could, providing food, resources, and hope. But I quickly realized that if I wanted to make a lasting difference, I needed to think longer-term. That's why I founded Loving Yourself Forward.
One of the things I observed, when I sent funds to someone for food, was that it was never just for them. Whatever they got, they would most likely share with whatever friends they had around. (Incidentally, the most often-requested item after food? Soap.)
Who runs it
The people behind LYF
Eushen runs LYF in Cebu day to day, with outreach staff who meet the girls in person, and a bookkeeper.
Patrick Bernard is LYF's founder, president and director. LYF is a US nonprofit corporation (Delaware) with a branch licensed in the Philippines.
Get in touch
Write to LYF at lyfiscoming@gmail.com. If your church, group or foundation would like to know LYF better, that is the address.
A church or group can give online, through a donor-advised fund, or by a check from its missions fund payable to Loving Yourself Forward Inc. Ways to give
Mail: Loving Yourself Forward Inc.
1207 Delaware Ave. #2606
Wilmington, DE 19806, USA