A heartwarming 3-minute video showing a young girl guiding her blind father to work on a coconut plantation in the Philippines recently went viral on Facebook and changed the lives of its protagonists. The video shows five-year-old Jenny, walking barefoot as she guides her blind father, Pepe “Dodong” Nelson, around a coconut farm, using a small wooden stick. She can be seen helping him avoid other people as they make their way through the coconut trees and guiding him to his lunch of crackers and water. With her help, Nelson manages to climb around 60 trees every day, for a pay of around 300 pesos ($6), barely enough to put food on their table.
The touching footage was shot by Rhuby Capunes Pabillon and uploaded to her Facebook page on June 10. Since then, it has garnered over 2.5 million views and has been featured by both national and international media outlets. The massive exposure and positive feedback from internet users prompted a charitable organization to get in touch with the family and offer them assistance. The ABS-CBN Foundation visited the father-daughter duo and took them to a hospital in Manila, where Nelson was diagnosed with suffering from retinal detachment and retinitis pigmentosa. He will now undergo “livelihood training”, and he and Jenny will soon be relocated to a “safer environment”.
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