ACTIVITY FIELDS OF AN ASSOCIATION - MANILLE, PHILIPPINES

The Virlanie Foundation has been helping street children from Manille, Philippines, for more than 15 years. Here you will find what activity fields it has carried out. (This page was written by the President of the Virlanie Foundation, Dominique LEMAY.) For many years now, numerous films, news reports, and book reports have shown to the world the extreme situation into which street children and adolescents in Manila have been plunged. After the initial emotional reaction caused by an overwhelming media sensationalism, social conscience tends to shut down because of feelings of helplessness, fatalism, or neglect.

Now, at the scene of the problem, emergency and long-term aid programs have succeeded in organizing and coordinating themselves as well as earning the support of the sympathetic population and the local authorities. Their work is now recognized and met with sympathy from all sides. Most importantly, they are concerned with saving those that suffer the most in this metropolis of 15 million inhabitants; children and adolescents without families that are living on the streets 24 hours a day. Their living conditions are frightful. They move and shock us. It is the rules of survival and, consequently, violence, hard drugs, and extreme solitude, as well as, in Manila especially, prostitution, to which the child escapes to have the illusion of being loved, to be able to clean and feed themselves, and bring some pesos to the group of kids that is surviving with them.

This situation that would be horrible for an adult is even more difficult for a child, who hasn’t received the emotional and psychological foundations, as well as the strength to be respected, in the face of those bigger than themselves in the street jungle.

To remedy this situation, it isn’t necessary to create closed or semi-closed networks with a continuous string of specialists. Apart from a center where they can be heard, which is intelligently connected to work in the streets and conducted by competent and motivated educators, developed little by little by the demands of the children, they also need projects to create small family-type structures or such structures in which the children feel free and secure at the same time.

By making the project their own, the children are better able to integrate the basic rules into it: not to steal, not to sell yourself, not to take drugs, not to lie about important matters. Each family structure, never more than 20 kids each, models itself on structures with parental foundations without trying to replace the child’s birth family. We must also accept that the child has to go through relapses; this comes from many years of being accustomed to the life on the streets. Little by little, the child can draw themselves a future with the help of adults, who bring him or her the kind of support that doesn’t separate the emotional from the educational. To be heard, recognized, loved, and to have a feeling of self-worth are all powerful tools for integration into society.

Knowing that they won’t experience another rejection, the children can acquire a newfound confidence in themselves, and a new image. They can become a child like others, educate themselves and regain a taste for games and other activities. As the child gets older he won’t be broken off from the project. As an adolescent he will be guided in his professional and personal life. Firstly, dedicated to humanitarian emergencies, the Virlanie project takes a long-term, educational stance on the situation. It is in this way that it can "filipinize" itself, and better assure personnel training and coordination of good local volunteers.

Since my arrival in the Philippines in 1987, I have been shocked to see very small children living and dying in the streets of Manila. I never pretended that I could solve this problem, but I wanted to help the kids to live in another way besides on the streets. So, we created, with Filipino partners, a shelter for street children.

Our first approach consisted of watching the street kids there, where they lived, and being available to listen to them, to get to know them and let them get to know us.

We have always wanted to give priority to kids that weren’t wanted by anyone; handicapped, prostitutes, drug addicts, etc.. Then, for the first time in the Philippines, we proposed to kids who couldn’t return to their families, to form a family household with no more than 20 kids, structured around a couple that was present 24 hours a day (a housemistress and a social worker). Being able to find a familial atmosphere (with love, attention, and the ability to be heard) gave these children, who are mostly very traumatised, a taste for life and hope for a better existence.

Education plays a large role for the child in terms of offering stability and easing insertion into society. When these children’s emotional problems are stabilized, they desire to become like other children. Being educated in Manila is already an achievement in itself. It helps a child envision the future, a better future for themselves. For those who don’t want a general education, we offer them an opportunity to study a specific trade.

Street children are always children in danger. Many kids live in the streets from the age of 4. Poverty often breaks up families that, as a result, abandon their kids in the streets or mistreat them. Many are handicapped and so experience a double rejection. This leads to drugs, stealing, without even taking into consideration prostitution, all of which lead to a child becoming more and more marginalized.

In the streets, girls outnumber boys (20 to 25%). Many of them prostitute themselves and are rejected by society. We have created a separate family-structured shelter, specifically for these girls. No matter their age or sex, the children suffer the same rejection that they try to forget by forming small gangs. Each of these gangs controls and protects their territory.

In this state of abandon, drugs have an important role. Kids take them in solvent form; amphetamines, or barbiturates that they acquire easily. 80% of street children take drugs regularly to forget, even for an instant, their immense anguish and solitude. The effects of the drugs have proven to be disastrous for their psychological stability as well as for the social behaviour of the child and drugs also lead to violence.

In the streets, the children have very little information about the dangers of sexually transmitted diseases and the risks of contamination, especially AIDS. The Virlanie Foundation, in collaboration with other associations, runs informational meetings in the streets and in the shelters. The absence of hygiene is also a grave problem that must absolutely be solved because it causes many diseases such as scabies, syphilis, infected wounds and many other types of infections.

Street children aren’t only rejected, they are also abused, unscrupulously, by adults.

Until 1993, these children found themselves locked in prison in Manila simply for vagrancy. Thanks to the tenacity of the foundation and the understanding of city authorities, these kids are not incarcerated anymore, but temporarily welcomed into an open building near the prison. One room was set-up for girls, and another for boys.

For more information, contact the Virlanie Foundation :

Action against child prostitution ...

Created on 5 march, 2005 - Updated on 15 november, 2007