THE kids watched as I tightened a shoe lace along one of Cagayan de Oro city’s poorer but remarkably clean-swept barangays. A tutorial on urban sociology was the last thing I expected.

“My mother is in prison,” volunteered Clara, 7. Why? “Shabu,” she said matter-of-factly. Paula, 6, claims a neighbor rival tipped off the cops. “Her mother burned all the shabu before the police arrived.”

Will you visit her in the Davao jail? “We have no money. But my lolo has been released.” He’d also been in the clink for drugs. “He often beats us though,” Clara gripes.

Sun.Star accepts donations for victims of Typhoon Ondoy

They proudly point to “our school.” Paula likes to color. “But I have no Crayolas.” Clara’s schoolbag has a book and a pencil. Nothing else.

Paula has three brothers. “I have ten brothers and sisters,” Clara says. “But Kuya Ronald died.”

Ten! Did your parents ever hear of family planning, I mutter. What? They ask. Nothing.

“The teacher often marks us absent,” both complain. Why? “If our dress is being washed, then we don't have anything to wear. So, we stay home.”

Paula adds wistfully: “I wish I had a new dress.” You’ll need more than that, kids.

Mentally, I stack the two against my grandchildren: Kristin, 6, in Cebu and Alexia, 8, in California. Clara and Paula are scrawnier, shorter. That points to “hidden hunger."

Denied essential nutrition in formative years, Clara’s and Paula's IQs will never fully bloom. These adverse effects spill across generations. Ill-fed wizened mothers give birth to dwarfed children, Asian Development Bank notes.”

Carla and Paula’s plight is replicated in some barangays here. They give a human face to 24 out of every 100 Pinoy families who don’t earn enough to satisfy the need for food and other essentials.

The ten poorest provinces include: Zamboanga del Norte (64.6 percent), Maguindanao (60.4 percent), Masbate (55.9 percent), Biliran (46.5 percent) and Lanao del Norte (46.5 percent), government reports.

They wave cheerfully as I leave. But sadness blankets me. Both will probably drop out before Grade Six. They won’t have the schooling to escape life sentences to poverty.

Their bleak lives mock a UN Millennium Development Goal target we’re pledged to meet: by 2015, achieve universal primary education.

The playing field isn’t level for Paula and Claudia, in their barangay, and Kristin in Cebu or Alexia in San Mateo county. (“Rep. Mikey Arroyo is NOT our neighbor,” my daughter emailed. “His house is in the next city-–thank heavens.”)

Alexia and Kristin get immunization shots, dental care, regular pediatrician visits, etc. Often, poor children here don’t even have a birth certificate. Their schools are substantially worse than those attended by children of “gated enclaves.”

Equality is one thing, the World Bank notes. But equity is another. Equity isn’t about equality in incomes, health, schooling or other assets.

Rather, it is the quest for a situation…when personal effort, preferences and initiative---and not family background, caste, race, or gender---that account for the differences between people's economic achievements.

“Three basic decisions underpin success of Nordic countries like Norway, Sweden or Denmark,” says Columbia University’ Earth Institute’s Jeffrey Sach. “First, they prioritized education. Second, they built a vigorous private sector. And they made sure no one was left behind.”