Monday, December 03, 2007 Editorial: Better than fiction
A MOVIE about a Filipina receiving a government subsidy for acting as surrogate mother to abandoned children won its third international award.
Brillante Mendoza’s “Foster Child” won the Prize for Fiction at the International Environmental Film Festival in Paris, France. The movie also won at the Osians Cinefan Film Festival in New Delhi and the Special Jury Prize at the Eurasia Film Festival in Kazakhstan.
Mendoza’s film shows a glimpse of the life of sacrifice of surrogate parents. Although the Department of Social Welfare and Development gives a foster parent P1,500 monthly to take care of an orphan or an abandoned child turned over to the authorities, the movie dramatizes what social workers and case histories attest to: raising a child exacts from the foster parent or family personal sacrifices, specially emotional dislocation when the child is adopted and leaves to join his legal parents.
How can individuals and families expose themselves, not just during one instance of vulnerability but often throughout a lifetime of accepting, nurturing and inevitably letting go children that can never be truly theirs?
Parenting has always been “hands-on.” As every parent, natural or foster, knows, a child thrives and has a decent chance of growing to be a loving adult when someone “eats and sleeps” with him, teaches discipline but also hugs and listens to keep the world at bay.
Home to every child
There’s never an end to what can be done for children.
Every stakeholder faces the challenge to turn the city into a “home to every child,” emphasized Cebu City First Lady Margot Osmeña during her Oct. 24, 2007 State of the Children Address to the Cebu City Council.
Last Nov. 8, 2007, Cebu City, as well as three other local governments, received presidential awards for being “child-friendly.”
Osmeña’s point, though, remains valid and urgent. Aside from “child-friendly” governance, the promotion of the welfare of children and minors should engage all sectors because everyone has a stake in the future.
For spending their Saturdays from December 2006 to March 2007 to mentor sixth grade students in Mathematics, the Student Council of the University of the Philippines High School in Cebu (UPHSC) for school year 2006-2007 was awarded as one of the Top Ten Accomplished Youth Organizations in the Philippines.
The National Youth Commission recognized the UPHSC Student Council, which partnered with the Ramon Aboitiz Foundation Inc. (Rafi) in facilitating an Academic Mentoring Program in Hipodromo Elementary School. The Math tutorials were viewed as contributing to the school’s higher ranking in the achievement exams.
Empowering nurturers
Last Oct. 8-9, 2007, the Dolores S. Aboitiz Children’s Fund (DACF) gave a seminar on “Positive Empowered Parenting” to Parents Teachers Community Associations (PTCAs) of 12 schools.
According to Annabelle S. Fajardo, DACF deputy executive director, the schools were located in barangays identified in the poverty map of Cebu by the Peace Equity Foundation as areas with high cases of violence against children.
Forty-eight participants from Barrio Luz, Mambaling, Pasil, Calamba, Basak San Nicolas, Basak Pardo, Guadalupe, Sto. Niño, T. Padilla, Kamagayan, Ermita, and Talamban listened as the Center for Family Ministries of Ateneo de Manila University shared knowledge and skills on understanding children at home, in school and in the community. The PTCAs are expected to echo this training to fellow parents.
Last Oct. 23-24, 2007, the DACF brought together 67 non-government workers assisting children and minors to retool their techniques to help children in pain. Child psychologist and therapist Dr. Lourdes Carandang of the University of the Philippines, Diliman, and her son, Christopher Carandang, also a clinical psychologist, tackled therapies that are effective with children, like music and art.
Officially launched last Oct. 2, 2007, in time with the celebration of National Children’s Month, the DACF provides funding and technical support to sustainable projects that can ensure “fullness of life” to a child.
As the anthropologist and intellectual Margaret Mead commented, “The solution to adult problems tomorrow depends on large measure upon how our children grow up today.”
