The poor have always been drawn to urban areas in their search for a better life. Migrants drawn to cities often list education opportunities as an incentive. But if they are pushed into living in the slum areas, the opposite can be true.

A slum usually starts out as an informal settlement on land unclaimed or vacant. With shelters built from basic materials and no services as such as water, electricity, or sewage available, and with few schools built near slum areas, children may have to sacrifice their schooling to work instead. A slum childhood is extremely difficult for many reasons, including the challenges of health, sanitation, and protection from the youth gangs that make life doubly frightening.

This is the environment where Efren G. Peñaflorida Jr., the first international awardee for CNN Hero, lived. CNN Heroes is a search for "people driven to exceptional achievement and amazing selfless acts."

Like many of the youth crammed into a Cavite dumpsite, Efren only wanted a decent education and a fair shot at life. Born to tricycle driver Efren Sr. and his wife Lucila, he spent most of his younger years playing and swimming in a garbage facility. He had his share of bad experiences while growing up and often fell prey to bullies and kids who sniffed solvents in the neighborhood.

In high school, Peñaflorida faced a new set of challenges. Gang activity was rampant and they terrorized the student body and vandalized the school. He himself was afraid to walk down the streets, but one day he stood up to a gang leader and refused to join his gang.

The confrontation proved positively fateful. Barely sixteen, he decided to not just lift himself out of the poverty and crime he found himself; he decided to take along with him other young children in similar desperate situations. Peñaflorida and his friends found a safe haven and supporter in Club 8586, a Christian people development organization and got the idea to get teenagers like him to be productive with an organization which he created, the Dynamic Teen Company (DTC).

The organization supports itself by making and selling crafts and collecting items to recycle. With Peñaflorida's Kariton Klasrum Program, books and other learning materials are placed in a pushcart where children learn reading, writing, arithmetic, and English. In the last 12 years, an estimated 10,000 volunteers of DTC have helped teach close to 2,000 children who live in the slums, recreating a school setting in unconventional locations such as cemeteries and municipal dumpsites. Through the group, Peñaflorida has successfully mentored former gang members, addicts, and dropouts, seeing their potentials where others see only problems. They credit Peñaflorida for pushing them to get their lives together.

For Peñaflorida, the work of the Dynamic Teen Company is simple and can be done by other youth groups regardless of their economic background. To the skeptics, it may be an effort too minor to undertake, but for the children who have not had the opportunity to step inside a school, it makes a world of difference. In his acceptance speech, at the CNN Hero ceremony, Peñaflorida stated, "Each person has a hidden hero within. You just have to look inside you and search in your heart, and be the hero to the next one in need... You are the change you dream as I am the change that I dream, and collectively, we are the change this world needs to be."

We congratulate Efren G. Peñaflorida Jr. for winning the 2009 CNN Heroes Award. You embody the spirit of Filipino volunteerism at its best!