PHILIPPINES

From street children to street families

The problem of street children in Metro Manila has turned into a social nightmare with more and more poor families now invading the streets in order to survive.
“From the problem of street children, we now have the problem of street families who look at the streets as a lucrative venue for livelihood,” said Nancy Roman, head of the street children unit of the Department of Social Welfare and Development-National Capital Region (DSWD-NCR).
Roman is supervising 800 to 1,000 rescued street children now attending a two-week summer camp for lessons on basic survival, character-building through positive values, and community involvement.The annual summer camp, now on its third year, opened yesterday and will end on April 20. It is organized by representatives from various government agencies led by the DSWD.

Roman said the belief that street children were being used by syndicates to beg or sell in the streets had no factual basis.
“That is definitely not true. There is no syndicate running the operation of these street children. The concept that there are syndicates is being sensationalized by media, but as social workers, we immerse in the streets and we deal with factual data,” Roman told the Inquirer. Roman said parents were the ones sending their children to the streets to beg for their daily sustenance. “Parents are the first to exploit their children,” she said.
“Bibihisan ng nakakaawa para mas malaki ang iuuwi ng bata (They make them look pitiful so that these would make more money). They are thriving on people's emotions,” Roman added.
She explained that parents had seen their children earning more from begging than the parents themselves do.

A persistent problem

Roman admitted that unless poverty was eradicated, the problem of street families in the Philippines would persist.
Pat Luna, chief of DSWD-NCR operations division, said the annual summer camp was an interagency initiative to address the increasing number of children in the streets.
The participants, aged 7 to 17, were rescued from the streets then processed by local governments before they were brought to the camping site for rehabilitation.
They come from all of Metro Manila's towns and cities-except Manila and Pasay, the local governments of which were conducting separate activities for them.
Luna said a comprehensive package of services for the participants included vocational and skills training, basic literacy and numeracy, home life and medical services, character building activities, environmental and adolescent education, and sports training.

Parenting enrichment

Their families, on the other hand, will be involved in parenting enrichment and values formation sessions and then given livelihood opportunities and other support services to prevent family disintegration.
“The ultimate goal of the summer camp is to reintegrate a neglected street child into his family and to place abandoned children in a residential facility while looking for a foster family,” Luna said.
The government agencies that composed the technical working group include the Population Commission, Department of Education, National Youth Center, Department of Public Works and Highways, and Department of Health, as well as the Boy Scouts of the Philippines and the Girl Scouts of the Philippines.
The Philippine National Police provided round-the-clock security for the children for the duration of the camp.

Cynthia Balana
7 April 2005

http://news.inq7.net/metro/index.php?index=1&story_id=32937

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