Childhope Philippines
CHILDHOPE Asia Philippines is a non-profit non-governmental organization working to promote the welfare of street children. Its mission is to liberate children from sufferings caused by working and living on the streets.
Who are the Street Children? Close to a quarter of a million street children live in major cities of the Philippines, up to 70,000 are in Metro Manila alone. Mostly boys aged 7 to 16 years old; some 30% are girls. Many live on the streets and have dropped out of school and are not able to maintain contacts with their families. A significant number are child vendors, scavengers, beggars, laborers and car-watchers. Others are prostituted or sexually exploited.
What Childhope programs assist street children?
1. Education on the Streets Program (ESP)
Street-based, the goal is to assist street children protect themselves from the pitfalls of living and working in the streets. They are motivated by Street Educators to give up street life and decide to either go back to their family (where feasible) or to live in a rehabilitation centre and eventually on the road to normal life. Currently, Childhope has 24 licensed Street Educators, working full time and in pairs. Each pair assists approximately 300 street children, “empowering” them to have direct access to basic social services and referrals. Most are licensed Social Workers and each requires an average annual remuneration equal to Euro 2,500.00.
2. Educational Assistance Program (EAP)
School-based, the EAP funds tuition and fees of 7 to 21 years old out-of-school youth and urban children who qualify to go back to school. The aim is to help them get out of street life, lessen their working hours in the streets and instil in them the importance of education as a way towards better life. The Vienna English-speaking Catholic Community, some Filipino Associations and individuals in Vienna are supporting 14 “EAP scholars”.
3. Community-Based Program
Local communities are formed and trained to assist in protecting the children; in following-up their progress in school; and in advocating children’s rights. In 2003, the UN Women’s Guild/Vienna provided a grant to train 26 women leaders on Advocacy on children’s rights.
CHILDHOPE has for two years been one of the beneficiaries of VESCC's Lenten Charity Projects. The major intervention strategy to make street children stand on their own two feet and lead a normal life is education. CHILDHOPE is providing such an opportunity to young street children towards which VESCC has been contributing. According to Dr. Isabel Aleta, CHILDHOPE coordinator, "VESCC is giving hope to these children. Their education makes it possible to break the evil circle of living in extreme poverty at the border of society. These children are then able to take a handle on their life, to gain self-confidence, to develop their potential for their own well being and for the well being of society."
For more information visit CHAP's website: http://www.childhope.org.ph
Project: Father Ungar Fund
This fund is named after our first and founder pastor of our community. Through this fund our community helps people of and related to our Community who are in need. It helps, for example, refugees and asylum seekers with food, medicine, transport, providing German course for beginners, etc. Fr. Kevin and Deacon Greg disperse the funds according to guidelines determined by the council and the dispersals are periodically reviewed.
Project: CONCORDIA, Romania, Eastern Europe: Community with Homeless Children
„When a child on the streets takes your hand and asks, ‘Do you have room for me?’, this is the beginning of a shared journey. We fight to give the child a bed and bread – the bread of love.”
Fr. George Sporschill SJ
After the fall of the Iron Curtain, Father Georg Sporschill SJ, an Austrian Jesuit, was sent to Romania with the goal of helping homeless children in the country. His initiative has grown into a community with more than one thousand members in 2006.
In Romania, there is a social centre which receives homeless children and provides first aid. 400 children live in 35 groups which resemble families in the “City of Children”, on the “Farm for Children” and in the several children’s homes in Bucharest. In addition to street work and advice, CONCORDIA provides training workshops for the education and therapy of the adolescents.
In the Republic of Moldavia, one model home with 22 children and a learning centre has been built in Chisinau since 2004. The foundation was laid for the “City of Children” in Pritia with 300 places.
Based on the model which proved successful in Romania and the republic of Moldavia, CONCORDIA opened its children’s home in the Ukraine in 2006. 72 children have been provided with accommodation in 6 family groups.
CONCORDIA collaborates in all countries with the state child protection agencies. In large projects, CONCORDIA shares the sponsorship with the state institutions.
The objective of CONCORDIA is to provide security and education to homeless children. The religious education is also important to CONCORDIA and works primarily with the orthodox churches in Romania, Moldavia and in the Ukraine. There is a chapel for ecumenical services in all establishments of CONCORDIA. When a Roman Catholic priest is available, the children enjoy the celebration of a Holy Mass.
Through the program Eastwind/Westwind, CONCORDIA invites young people from poor and rich countries to share the work on an honorary basis for one year. The social work strengthens their personalities. They find direction for their lives and a religious foundation. CONCORDIA employs 300 educational staff.
The educational concept of CONCORDIA is simple and clear. There are six steps on the way up. The children are accompanied step by step with the goal healing and to enabling them to become independent.
First Step – Street Work:
The street work team goes to the children in the streets. They invite them to come with CONCORDIA.
Second Step – Social Centre:
The social centre Lazarus is a contact point with simple rules to allow children to stay.
Third Step – Children’s Home:
The children who were homeless live in children’s homes. They find a family.
Fourth Step – Training Workshops:
The completion of a good training is the first step to growing up.
Fifth Step – Shared Accommodations:
The adolescents discover the path into independence in the shared accommodation schemes.
Sixth Step – Club CONCORDIA:
The alumni gather in Club CONCORDIA as friends and advisers; they pass on what they have received.
“He who saves one life, saves the whole world” is the Biblical wisdom which provides the guidelines for the pastoral work with homeless children.
Project: Fe y Alegria in Jicamarca, Peru
“Imagine every morning looking out from your bedroom window into emptiness, dirt, dust and desperate poverty. Where there is no electricity, running water or sanitation. Where disease lies in every corner. Where the only thing to catch are fleas. Where being hungry for most people forms part of daily living. Where home is a shack. Now, imagine you choose to live in this place”.
“Fe y Alegria” stands for Faith and Happiness. Fe y Alegria is a movement for comprehensive popular education and social development whose activities are directed at the most impoverished and excluded sectors of the population to empower them in their personal development and their participation in society. (These are schools founded by the Jesuits and staffed by other religious and laypeople. Fe y Alegria is active in 13 Latin American countries, educating more than 500,000 students each year).
Fe y Alegria in Jicamarca
Jicamarca is inhabited by 25,600 indigenous people and immigrants in 5,800 families. 68% of the population is under 20 years old. The inhabitants of Jicamarca live in total poverty with 49% below subsistence level. These young people have an extremely high level of malnutrition and tuberculosis is endemic.
The lack of social and housing policies together with the terrorist phenomenon has caused the migration towards the capital. Due to the great need of these people to obtain better conditions of life, they have settled in the surrounding areas of Lima. These places are in rocky, mountainous, uninhabited zones in which people live without the basic necessities. The slum dwellers are constantly threatened by legal problems of earth possession and eviction orders from immoral land dealers.
In order to improve the quality of life for the people in these slums, Catholic organisations and individuals have embarked on projects such as forestation programs, other projects are also focussed on giving to the population a better place to live and trying to contain the growth of these inhumane living condition.
One such project is the Fe y Alegria communal school, one kilometre outside Lima, run by Sister Patricia McLaughlin, a Loreto Nun. Her mission is to give the children in the slums a chance in life and future. She strongly believes that, “these children will become teachers, carpenters, electricians, lawyers and doctors. … They are as bright as any other children anywhere in the world”.
She further states that, “The important thing is not to just give them everything. They have to have dignity. And so when they come to school they are provided with certain things but their uniforms are paid for by their parents. … The parents also help out in the school on a regular basis and participate in the activities. They helped us to set it up”.
The Fe y Alegria School caters for 140 children (40 in each class0 but will eventually cater for 1000. At the moment it is just a Primary School but there are plans to start a Secondary School soon (next year). The school has a football team, a choir and a library.
The Fe y Alegria School has also a nursery section where many of the children get fed. Sister Patricia says that, “For many of these children this is the only bit of food they get in the entire day because there is none at home. Many are constantly hungry and they tell me and we cope as best we can. Their mothers are very young and they go out to work to maintain their families. Many of them are single mothers who just work to buy food for their children”.
Project: Daughters of Divine Love Pro-Life Centre Eha-Alumona, Africa
Daughters of Divine Love Pro-Life Centre Eha-Alumona is an initiative of the Daughters of Divine Love Congregation; a Female Religious Congregation founded by the late Most Rev. Dr. G. M.P Okoye CSSP, the second Bishop of Enugu Diocese of Nigeria. The primary objective in founding this centre is to share the love of Christ with all men and women especially those of them that are disadvantaged, abandoned or rejected by the society. As pro-lifers they stand against anything that would endanger the gift of life which God extended to every human being on trust.
The activities and programmes in this centre are geared towards ensuring that human life is highly valued and respected. The centre has a very big hospital with qualified doctors and nurses that render medical assistance and free counselling on such issues like abortion, HIV/AIDs, family planning, and dieting, etc… There are so many who are dying on daily basis as a result of HIV/AIDS menace. We have a team of medical staff that goes to the hinterland to spread the Gospel of Life. So many people have been saved from death through this “health awareness outreach”.
The rate of promiscuity in the society is so alarming these days. There are so many cases of newly born babies being thrown into the gutters or bushes. The centre has a provision for keeping these motherless babies and taking very good care of them. It is their belief that these children deserve the right to live. There are others whose mothers died during delivery who are also brought to the centre for proper medical attention and care. Right now there are seventy motherless babies in our care. To assist these children, a nursery /primary schools have been opened for them. The centre also has a provision for keeping and assisting those young girls with unwanted pregnancies until they give birth to their babies. Presently, there are 35 young ladies with unwanted pregnancies in the centre waiting for the delivery of their babies. It is the centre’s wish to open up a skill acquisition workshop to help these ladies acquire some skills that may help them in life. Most of these girls that get unwanted pregnancies attribute that to poverty.
There are so many to be helped and so many lives to be saved. The problem is that the Centre is financially incapacitated. The centre relies mainly on the charity and good will of the people of God. Apart from that, the Centre also engages in some domestic farming and poultry farms though on a very small scale. Nevertheless, the centre is in serious need of commuter bus for transporting inmates and for “health awareness outreach”, a generator plant, water and more especially food including baby food.
3) SPECIAL PROJECTS
Our Community also often times supports seasonal projects (especially at Advent, Christmas, Lent and Easter), one-time projects in response to unanticipated disasters, and special projects due to other particular circumstances (i.e., projects in India during the visits of Fr. Cyril Desbruslais S.J.). These projects will either be described in the bulletin, or in the case of disasters, simply announced on Sunday before Mass.
