"Ana"

If you saw her, you’d have thought that she was just another carefree girl enjoying her youth. That’s what I first thought when I met Ana. But first impressions can be deceiving and barely scratch the surface of a young life that has already experienced unimaginable horror and hardship.

For it wasn’t long ago that Ana was walking home from work at a sardine factory. Still aching after 11 gruelling hours filling cans with ingredients to help support her family, Ana was accosted, dragged to a secluded area and raped at knifepoint. She was just 14 years old.

Although physically and emotionally traumatized by the experience, Ana had no choice but to continue working. Since the death of her father two years prior, Ana was the sole breadwinner of the family and she shouldered the responsibility of sending her twin brothers to school. Despite the incident and her emotional burden, she continued to rise every morning to walk the four kilometres to the factory, buoyed only by the hope of building a better future for her family. Then she found out that she was pregnant.

In order to keep the pregnancy from the community, Ana was forced to drop out of school. Sitting alone in her house, cradling her growing belly and fighting feelings of anger, shame and guilt over that helpless horrific afternoon, Ana’s hopes for a better life for herself and her family began to fade.

Then, thanks to you, a second chance came.

In 2004, Ana was among 500 children and youth screened for the Alternative Learning System (ALS) program being offered by the Laura Vicuña Foundation (LFV) through the Community Mobilization for Education (COME) program. While grateful for the opportunity, doubts still plagued Ana. “I’ve been out of school for two years. Can I still make a better future?” she asked herself.

But with extraordinary perseverance, Ana overcame the obstacles to become one of the most promising students in her class. Despite having returned to the factory, Ana would still visit the LFV Centre to borrow modules and other reading materials in her free time. When the centre closed, she would pore over the books at home teaching herself high school level math, science, English and other subjects while her young daughter slept soundly nearby. In 2007, Ana took the ALS Accreditation and Equivalency Test for Secondary Level and passed.

Ana’s hard work had paid off but more doors were still waiting. Doors that have been opened by donors like yourself.

By completing her ALS, Ana had qualified for the Youth Career Development Program (YCDP) implemented by LVF and UNICEF Manila. With the YCDP, Ana would now have a chance to receive hotel and restaurant training at some of Manila’s premier hotels. But first she had to hurdle the interview, and she was nervous. “I’m just an ALS graduate and everybody else is college level. What chance do I have?” she thought.
Nevertheless, while the new batch of YCDP trainees were still being selected, Ana knew she could not rest. As tenacious as ever, Ana continued to work, this time at a pharmacy to continue supporting her family. And when the call came in that she had been accepted for the YCDP, Ana bid goodbye to her family and made the trip to the capital for the five month training program.

Training at one of Manila’s most prestigious hotels, Ana learned about cultivating a professional image and began to boost her self-confidence. She also learned the ins and outs of the hotel business, gaining hands on experience in housekeeping, the kitchen and even engineering.

“At first it was hard. I felt out of place. I had to get used to different kinds of people. I felt uncomfortable and I didn’t know what I was supposed to do,” Ana says. Overwhelmed by the loud, bustling concrete jungle of Manila, she also missed her family and the peace and quiet of the province. But after a few weeks, Ana began to adjust and while other batch mates lost courage and dropped out or surrendered to circumstances, she remained as tenacious as ever, refusing to let her second chance slip away. “I can do this,” Ana began to realize.

Again, Ana’s hard work paid off. Even before her February 2008 graduation from the program, she was already hired as a contractual worker for the hotel – the first among her batch. Recognized by the hotel management for her perseverance and good work, she was also entrusted to care for the hotel president’s office. Yet even with a stable job, Ana chose not to rest on her laurels. With newfound confidence and an eye on the future, she recently accepted a transfer to another rising hotel, knowing that her chances to succeed would be even greater if she broke through her comfort zones. “I wanted a new environment and I knew that I would have more opportunities if I was part of the opening team,” she says quietly but confidently.

Now, as Ana looks over the city’s skyline, I wonder what she’s thinking. Just 19 years old, she has come a long way from packing chilli and tomatoes into sardine cans. A long way from a terrible, abusive experience that unfortunately, waylays many young girls’ futures.

Today, Ana boards with a YCDP batch mate in Pasay City and commutes everyday on the mass railway system to her work in Ortigas. With glowing recommendations, she has now been entrusted to care for the office of the nationwide president of hoteliers and also receives personal guest requests for housekeeping. “I like housekeeping because we’re the first people that the guests encounter,” Ana, the girl who was once so concerned about being a simple lass in the big city, says.

As independent as ever, she still supports her family back home and her two brothers are in their final year of high school. In her spare time, she enjoys going to the mall with her friends or reading the newspaper to catch up on current events. She’s even thinking of going back to school to earn her degree in Hotel and Restaurant Management. Just like any girl enjoying her youth, but one who has faced incredible obstacles and triumphed.

“Don’t think you can’t do it,” Ana said when I asked her if she had any words of encouragement to other young people like herself. “You have to believe you can do it. Think of what you want to achieve and go for it. Don’t give in to negative thoughts,” she said. More than just saying it however, Ana has lived her words.
Ana has become a role model and an inspiration to many young people, not only in her home province of Negros Occidental but in Manila as well. She has given hope to many young girls and women like herself who have been sexually abused and who believe that their futures have been taken from them. It was you who gave Ana that hope and it’s you who can continue to help others like her with your donations.

The YCDP is just one of UNICEF’s many projects in connection with partner NGOs which are designed to help sexually exploited girls and young women regain their self-worth and dignity. By sending your help as soon as possible, you can ensure that the program keeps running and that more girls and young women from the province can have a second chance to reclaim their lives and futures.

Barangay Pananawan, Masbate

To reach Barangay Pananawan, one must travel down a long, lonely dirt road to the south western coast of Masbate and then take a short banca ride through a thick mangrove. Here, some 345 families live on the edge of the Visayan Sea. In their coastal isolation, they make their livings mostly by fishing in nearby waters or farming in the interior mountains.

Among the barangay residents is Rose Marie Cabigas. A 40-year-old housewife, Rose Marie devotes her time to her eight children including 7-year-old Eugene and 4-year old Seny Rose. A typically curious second grader, Eugene enjoys his lessons in the nearby elementary school and also makes time for his favourite past-time, drawing. Like any other boy, he enjoys climbing trees with his friends and recently had to be taken to the health centre for a nasty fall from one of his latest adventures. With shy eyes covered by brown hair lightened by the sun and sea, Eugene was also born without legs and must pull himself across the hot, stony ground of the village on his thin arms.

Rose Marie’s husband, Senin, tills the land of a non-resident of Panan-awan, earning a percentage of the rice palay harvest. When the season begins to slow down, he also fishes and looks for odd jobs to help put food on the table. Recently however, he has had to leave Rose Marie and the younger ones to attend to the burial of his mother in another island.

While previously, Rose Marie might not know where her and her family’s next meal might come from, she now breathes a little easier with the assistance extended to her from the government’s Filipino Family Social Welfare program (4P) and conditional cash transfer (CCT) initiative. Since December 2008, Rose Marie has been receiving P1400 ($28) a month as part of the government’s conditional cash transfer program.

“It’s a big burden off my shoulders. I no longer have to borrow money to just buy even the necessities,” Rose Marie says in Cebuano. While empty fishing nets would have meant that Eugene, Seny Rose and their siblings would have had to go to bed hungry, Rose Marie can now always make sure that the family has at least three meals a day.

In addition to food, Rose Marie has also been able to pay her children’s tuition fees for the coming term, buy the necessary school supplies and medicines for her family. While Eugene is excited to return to class with his clean new notebooks, his little sister Seny Rose will begin attending the newly built day care centre in the village.

With additional guidance coming from parental effectiveness and financial literacy seminars, Rose Marie has also been able to set aside a small amount each week. “I save about 20 pesos a week, every Saturday. I’d like to be able to save more as time goes by. Maybe 50 pesos a week, and then maybe even P100 a week. But no Saturday goes by that I don’t set aside at least P20,” Rose Marie says.

Her dream is to finish building their little wooden home and hopefully begin a business, such as selling food. She also hopes that a high school will soon rise in or closer to their barangay before Eugene graduates so that he won’t have a difficult time travelling to attend school in the neighbouring village. In the meantime, she hopes to find a pair of crutches for Eugene so he can move around more easily and build his self-confidence. Although Eugene enjoys school and his teachers single him out for his enthusiasm, he is also a sensitive boy not immune to the teasing of his classmates. Sometimes, he would rather stay at home to avoid their hurtful remarks, Rose Marie says.

While the future is still uncertain, Rose Marie is more confident about facing the challenges ahead with the skills and attitudes being fostered and developed by seminars implemented by UNICEF together with the CCT program. Even though two older children had to stop school to help their father, Rose Marie is now confident that Eugene and Seny Rose will be able to complete their studies.

“We’ll become more used to handling money and when the 4Ps is finished, I think we’ll know what to do,” she said.

However, while the CCT program is helping some families such as Rose Marie focus on the future; some families are still overwhelmed by their current situations.
Delia Moralde and her husband Domingo live in a small hut along with their nine children near the village’s coastline. Their hut is divided into two sections; a sleeping area and a cooking area. Firewood is stacked on one end of the home, near a crude oven. Thin native chickens pick at fallen grains of rice on the dirt floor and used foil sachets plucked from the sea have been placed strategically between beams to support the makeshift roof. Inside the sleeping area, an elevated portion of the hut blocked off by horizontal wooden planks, seven-year old Arnel lies stretched out observing the sights around him. The size of a one-year old, Arnel was born with Down Syndrome and is unable to walk or talk. While survival continues to be a challenge for the Moraldes, the family at least now has a fighting chance. Before the introduction of the cash grants, six of their children died due to preventable causes such as measles and hepatitis. Now, all their children have been fully immunized.

Domingo earns about P150 a week, mostly by ferrying people up and down the estuary and to nearby islands. Lately, however Domingo has been sick and unable to earn the needed funds to keep his family afloat. While Delia receives P1400 a month in assistance, the money is already stretched to pay for her children’s food and schooling and to take care of Arnel.

Delia however tries to ensure that they always have rice, which she mixes with corn to feed the family. A large portion of the assistance meantime goes to buying sterilized milk for Arnel who is unable to digest solid foods. Out of the P7000 she received in the last five months, P4000 has gone towards the children’s tuition fees, supplies, and clothes while the rest went for food. With all the financial pressures bearing down on her to simply get through another day, Delia has no opportunity to save even a fraction of her funds.

Sensing her parents’ helplessness meantime, Baby, their 16-year-old daughter who is in the fifth grade says that she would like to stop her schooling so she can work as a helper in the city to earn some money for her family and herself. Baby and other adolescents like her, are the target of UNICEF life skills seminars that aim to prepare potential migrants to live and work in the country’s larger, congested cities where trafficking and child exploitation still run rampant. Aside from instilling “street smarts” in the children, the seminars would also provide vocational skills training to expand their job options beyond the realm of domestic help.

When asked what their dreams are, Delia and Domingo just laugh sheepishly, searching the air for answers before settling into silence with resigned smiles on their faces. When the assistance stops coming, they’ll just do whatever it takes to survive, Delia finally says quietly. In the meantime, dreams for the future have no place in this seaside hut, where every ounce of energy and resources must go towards getting through the day.

Delia and Rose Marie are just two of more than 100 CCT beneficiaries in Barangay Panan-awan. But more than just the beneficiaries themselves, the community as a whole is benefitting from the social welfare program and the values they promote. For example, Barangay Panan-awan officials have become more receptive to new ways of improving their community and are no longer deterred by obstacles to pursue the important projects that will benefit the families of Panan-awan. Even the youth are getting involved with the SK willing to put up a P50,000 counterpart for the renovation and construction of school rooms in the community. Barangay officials meantime are also gaining valuable experience in resource mobilization, planning and collaborating with different levels of government.

With the CCT helping to provide for many of the families’ basic needs and stirring a spirit of entrepreneurialism and a new realization that the cycle of poverty can be broken, Barangay Panan-awan is a village hungry to develop themselves and use the help they’ve been given to become more self-reliant.

People. Power.

Former President Corazon C. Aquino passed away over the weekend. I was in the province, enjoying a slight reprieve and had purposefully and happily denied myself any communication devices. I only heard about it over drinks with Cyril late Saturday evening at Natalna.

Since returning to Manila, I have gone over the tributes, watched some videos and listened to the news. This afternoon, I watched her September 1986 speech before the U.S. Congress as well as some videos of the 1986 Edsa Revolution. On the radio in the taxi, I listened as throngs of supporters did a sort of pilgrimage, accompanying Cory's casket and retracing the major landmarks of People Power before heading to the Manila Cathedral.

When Edsa 1 was playing out, I was a seven year old in China. I remember people on the street waving to us, giving the thumbs up sign and yelling "Go Philippines!" I remember giving a speech on our home countries in school, wearing a yellow t-shirt saying "I stopped a tank with my heart." To this day, nothing brings a tear to my eye like watching videos of that great time in our history when the Filipino was at her best.

To me, that is what Cory represents. The best of the Filipino. Not because she was the best Filipino herself, but because she became a symbol of great aspirations of a very humble people. In those three days in 1986, the aspirations were realized.

With her passing, I pray for an awakening – that the spirit of Edsa 1986 be rekindled. A spirit of hope. I pray that Filipinos realise that People Power was not just about Cory. After all, it was the people that rallied around her and who put their lives on the line for her. People Power was about the people. The women who tied themselves to ballot boxes to protect votes, nuns who faced down tanks armed only with rosaries , children who offered soldiers flowers – every Filipino who wanted change and fought for it and inspired the world. While Cory gave us hope, the Filipino gave her courage. The Filipino gave Ninoy and Cory a reason.

Some would argue that we squandered Edsa 1. Perhaps it is true. But at the same time, the history of this country is not yet finished. A recent Time magazine article concluded by asking whom will the Filipino people march with now that "their saint has gone to meet her God?"

I think the time has come to march with our best selves without the impetus of a symbol. If we squandered Edsa 1, let us not squander Cory's death. I hope that the what Edsa 1 symbolized can finally be realized. That as we grieve the loss, we also realise what we are capable of. Maybe her passing can help us reclaim People Power by reminding us of our best selves.

Inspiring, heroic, brave. Filipino.