The first thing is to ensure that every child gets a full education until the age of 18. Presently, education is not free and so in the many very large, poor families, some children miss out because parents can't afford to send them all to school. This means that they grow up excluded from all but the most menial and low-paid jobs. The very poor are excluded also from some basic elements of life like banking. Philippine banks insist that you maintain a balance of 2000 Pesos in your account, 10000 for joint accounts. Those amounts look like nothing when you convert them into any western currency, but it's more than a poor Filipino can afford to have sitting idle. Anyone who does get a job that pays salary by bank transfer can open a 'payroll' account which has no requirement to maintain a minimum balance, but a huge number of the population is barred from the modern world of banking. The Catholic church here is also incredibly dogmatic and has a stranglehold over the hearts and minds of the people, and fights against the use of proper family planning (even though it failed to stop the Reproductive Health bill being passed), it welcomes families that keep pumping out children as blessings but does little if anything to help their raising once they are born, so breaking the cycle of huge families unable to feed themselves and just continuing to grow proves incredibly difficult. The political system here is immensely corrupt, whilst elections here have the outward appearance of being democratic, the nation remains in the hands of a small number of families who are in the game to serve themselves rather than the country's whole 100+ million population. The latest president, the highly controversial Rodrigo Duterte, promised to end corruption and has scratched the surface of the problem, but since he has been revealed to be in the pockets of the Marcos family, hopes are not particularly high. The Philippines is a country with many problems, but to be perfectly honest, most Filipinos have little will to make changes. Yes, they complain about all of the wrong things, but perfectly good solutions that work like treats elsewhere are always written-off with the phrase “That'll never work here”, which is a total conversation stopper.