|
Friday, January 24, 2003
Obenieta: Down the block, and up ahead
By Myke U. Obenieta
SOUND OF MOSAIC
No sweat, kiddo, if you wish to be wais. All it takes, if you tap your toe along John Lennon’s lines, is “watching the wheels.” Which means that you, if you’d literally go for it, don’t need a notebook. There’s a lot to learn down the road. “You just have to let it go,” as Lennon so warbled.
Of course, there’s a whole league of prim and proper figures of authorities likely putting their foot down while talking at you as though you were a toddler from across the dining table, in front of the blackboard, or up the pulpit. If there’s one thing the so-called School of Hard Knocks is good at, they’d aver, it’s on the matter of imparting the basics on “How to be cynical and cold-blooded without really trying.” In short, Criminality 101. Good luck, they add, as you kick your way up the high road to perdition. Man, so much for street smarts.
Two incidents in a space of about half an hour were enough of grim reminders while I was walking down Pelaez St. recently. Barely did I cross path with two boys running—not more than 10-yeard old both, I reckon—when a thirtysomething woman reeled smack at me, trembling and breathless for help. They took my wallet, she huffed. When I looked back, of course, the two ruffians were as good as gone with the wind.
As if that was not enough, I was about to step on the curb at the back of the USC main campus when a sidewalk vendor flailed for a cab that would take her teenage son, bleeding from the head, to the hospital.
One of Colon’s street kids stabbed him with a barbecue stick, or so I overheard one of the other kibitzers gathered nearby.
No, I didn’t have to think of “Daddy Divine” and his so-called “children of the lesser god” to see that some kids are skidding down the road hard, as grizzled as they get, in spite of the whole nine yards of well-meaning attempts by related agencies to tame these not-so-innocent little fellas.
I got to thinking about them after reading this paper’s little report— overshadowed as it was by the brouhaha over “Daddy Divine” and the usual variations of childish antics of politicians and policy-makers that become the stuff of headlines—regarding the brainchild of two city councilors in Mandaue.
According to City Councilors Rosita Benabaye and Dionesio Ceniza, a street education” program will go a long way in helping Mandaue’s runaway kids get a headstart to a meaningful future, in steering them out of harm’s way. “Street education is an alternative response which includes the delivery of basic services and provision of information to ensure the street children’s survival and protection against the harsh elements of street life,” so both Benabaye and Ceniza stressed vis-à-vis the ordinance they hope to establish under the City Social Welfare Services Office.
If that sounds a tad quixotic to those who deem it convenient to look the other way, waxing hopeless as some of us are wont, the Mandaue City Council is not necessarily venturing to uncharted seas, so to speak.
There’s the fine example in nearby Lapu-Lapu City to go by as a guidepost, to begin with. Consider the Batang Opon Foundation, a community-based undertaking with not a little help from civic-minded individuals and establishments, whose movers devised a program that not only feeds the disadvantaged kids in the neighborhood, but also imparts the basics in learning skills and values formation.
Again and again, there’s still so much to mull over about how a journey of a thousand miles can begin.
(January 24, 2003 issue)
Want Sun.Star news on your mobile phone? Click here. |
|
[ return
to top ]
[ home
]
|
LOCAL NEWS
BUSINESS
OPINION
SPORTS
LIFESTYLE
FEATURE
SUPERBALITA
WEEKEND
|
