It was about sundown and the scenery was exquisitely captivating. It
was a windless hot summer day. A herd of carabao was grazing in the
background and being framed against the fading glow of a dying day.
It was typical rural Butuan.
I spent the whole morning with children. This was the time we
implemented the Target A Child Initiative, a combined project of PRESAF
and the Mindanao Association of Calgary. I met fifty children recipients
and their parents early that day. It was organized chaos at first.
But we sorted it out successfully and the outcome was a well-managed event.
I was a guest at a barrio seniors association after. They prepared a
small party. I was with a group of friends. There was a crude banner
welcoming us. I was impressed. We were about to enter the barangay
senior's hall, when a group of children came. They held my hands and
brought my wife and me to the chapel across the road. There was a
fair sized group of children in catechism class in the kapilya. They made
us sat on chairs they arranged. They danced and sang beautiful songs
as they circled around us.
I watched closely their faces. They were excited, happy and giving
all their eagerness and enthusiasm to their dance and songs. Their
parents were poor barrio folks as reflected in their modest clothing.
They however were neat, healthy and cheerful children.
In the midst of these, my mind wandered back to Rey Ignacio, the
then president of the Mindanao Association in Calgary. He was from
Zamboanga. We often talked about his desire to help the poor children
of Mindanao. After months over numerous cups of coffee in our favorite
shopping mall, we finally designed a project. We called it, Target a
Child Initiative. He intended to put it into action through his club.
After a series of meetings, it was approved for implementation. He
was so excited. Unfortunately, he became ill and died before he could
start building his dream.
I was privileged to deliver his eulogy. I promised him that his dream
wouldn't die by his passing. That it would go on as he wanted it. I
started selling the plan to Filipino associations. The Mindanao
Association under the new leadership of Ernie Amante was willing to carry
on the project. PRESAF was also interested to help work with fundraising
and in the operation side.
I saw the actual content of Rey Ignacio's dream in the eyes of the
poor children. Poverty bars their plight to a promising and productive
future. Given a chance, these offspring of the impoverish ranks no
less with other children anywhere. With a little assistance to cover
their initial needs, they will over time be fruitful and useful citizens.
There is hope in the smile and laughter of a happy child. Target a Child
Initiative is a mechanism to grant these children the brighter future which
poverty culprits to deprive. They have the capacity and competence to
build dreams. But leaving them alone amongst the abysmal helplessness of
parents to provide, these healthy and supposedly hope of a bankrupt
nation will just dwindle into nothingness to become insignificant statistic
in a cruel and uncaring society.
I was sitting on a bench at Rizal Park fronting my hotel the next
morning. I found myself being surrounded later by children of different
ages. They extended open hands and begged for food. Decades ago, I
just ignored this kind of situation. It was common sight with no
solution anyway. It has been ongoing on for so long that no one cared
anymore. I went on with my life in a dog eat dog kind of world where the
clever and the courageous had better chances to prosper. The destitute
and indigent people were just deemed as usual nuisances. I didn't have
the compassion of Rey Ignacio and neither his vision. I helped him
because it's hard to refuse an appeal from a good friend.
It's however far from saying that I had not shared an experience of
being a homeless hungry little boy. On the contrary, I too with Oscar
Durano begged food in restaurants in Cebu City when we were kids.
We were stowaway from a copra-cargo ship, MV Carmen from Butuan and
found ourselves aimlessly in the big city. We occasionally begged for
leftovers at a restaurant at the corner of Colon and Pelaez Streets
and sometimes at Bahug-Bahug Place nearby. There were times
when owners of restaurants forcefully drove us out as our presence ruined
the appetite of customers. We spent our nights with homeless vagabond
children at the ruins of Fort San Pedro.
Back at Rizal Park, I welcome the young beggars with kindness. It was
a trip down memory lane. I was dragged backward in time into the streets
in Cebu City with my boyhood friend Oscar. It was really irksome to
realize that more than half a century did come to pass, yet the condition
of street children was not at all different. It remained perpetually the
same.
The change however was in myself. I went home and grew up in a challenging
world with an attitude to overcome challenges along my way. The lesson
I learnt from being a vagrant child has been with me since. I valued it
equally with the teaching and enlightenment from learning institutions. It
always gave me a daring perspective that if things turn out differently,
I would hardly go down lower than what it was in Cebu.
I absorbed in full the compassion of Rey Ignacio towards the children.
It indeed was a wonderful and rewarding feeling. He could have been around
when we implemented his project. I knew that he would compromise for
Butuan instead of Zamboanga as planned. This was the day we always talked
about at the shopping mall. His dream did come true. Although, I never had
any inkling then that I would also shoulder the responsibility that goes
with it.
