Isang Litrong Liwanag is a project being done in the Philippines right now that 1) provides solar light to hundreds of dark homes, 2) upcycles plastic bottles, and 3) is overall pretty eco-friendly.
And from the looks of the video, it seems it could possibly support some kind of micro-entrepreneurship in many communities. But maybe I just think that way because I’m me.
Such a simple solution. Amazing.
A few weeks ago in the Philippines, I had the opportunity to visit a number of organizations. One of them was Red Window, which focuses on developing economic opportunities for adolescent girls and young women who have been sexually exploited — many at a high risk of re-trafficking.
Red Window was actually founded by a former board member of Restore NYC who had also previously worked in a number of anti-trafficking initiatives such as Hagar. I was not able to meet Laura unfortunately as she’s actually in New York getting her PhD at Columbia School of Social Work (we’ve swapped locations).
I met with Amy Collins, who was the first social work intern at Restore back when it was just launching and is currently part of the staff at Red Window. After talking over dinner with me about her work at the organization, she invited me to observe a day of class with the students.
A few days later, I hopped on a jeepney and headed over to her building, just in time for a class. I actually recognized a few of the students from working with them at The Haven and at Welcome House and was glad to be able to take part in a bit more of their post-care experience.
I actually connected with Red Window because they had helped Restore quite a bit this past year in developing our own job readiness program for our clients. It was pretty exciting to see where our program first stemmed from and how it’s tailored for the two different populations in NYC and in Cebu.
The lesson I observed was conducted pretty much all in Cebuano by two locals but fortunately I understood enough to get by. The focus of the class was developing their vision statements.
I cannot express how much I LOVED this class and how it was run. The teachers were phenomenal and handled everything so wonderfully. I can’t go into the details of the lesson for the sake of respecting Red Window’s lesson plan and program that they worked so hard to create, but I’ll try to give a small glimpse into it.
After the first part of the class, which entailed an exercise that encouraged the girls to develop a sense of their strengths, interests, and aspirations, they were given a short explanation on how to create and write a vision statement. Each girl was given a card to write out her statement.
After each one presented her statement, they moved on to a self-awareness portion. When asked how they felt about their statements — what thoughts and feelings they were experiencing in relation to the statement — they began to shout out things such as “hopeful” and “inspired” and “excited.” I started to wonder how the teacher would handle the girls having completely negative reactions of discouragement towards this activity. And then the girls must have read my mind because some began to say things like “not real/possible” and “too ambitious” and “inadequate.”
I loved what the teacher did then. She wrote each one down on the board, just as they were calling them out. After the list was compiled, she acknowledged the positive feelings/thoughts and then circled the negative ones. She asked, “These statements are not as encouraging, right? These feelings can overwhelm us at times and hinder us greatly. But they’re not true statements. What true statements can we tell ourselves to counter these negative ones?” And as she went down the list, each of the girls began to shout out things targeted to each negative statement.
As she wrote them down, she had them all say it loudly.
“I will be strong!”
“You can do it!”
“I will be confident!”
“Keep going!”
etc. etc.
I then had to butt in. I turned to them and said, “You shouldn’t say ‘I will be strong.’ There is no need to tell yourself to be strong and confidence because you already are strong and confident. Do you know what I’m saying?”
And they all began to nod and rephrase the counter statements to be assertive.
“I AM strong!”
“I AM confident!”
“I can do it!”
“I will not quit!”
etc. etc.
The teacher asked for added phrases or quotes or verses as well. Since the girls expressed that they enjoyed Bible verses (it’s a heavily Catholic society) I shared with them Joshua 1:9 — “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid for I, the LORD, and with you wherever you go.”
Each girl chose one or two statements to write down for herself before sharing with the class. A number of them recited the verse from Joshua, which was encouraging to hear from them. The teacher made them re-say it if they didn’t say these positive statements with oomph too, haha. It was nice.
Before I left, I noticed their goals and dreams collages on the wall, which was the first lesson that Kelly had conducted with our clients at Restore and which I had conducted with the girls at The Haven also. Loved seeing it done in so many places!
Though I was at Red Window just for one day and only to observe, I absolutely loved my experience there. The program is great and the staff is great. The students there definitely display some difficulties in seeing their own potential and self-worth but at the same time, there is a lot of resilience shining through which is being encouraged even more by Red Window’s program.
Despite having had very spotty Internet access, taking freezing cold showers, and exchanging Kristen, Shaun, & Mortimer for geckos, armies of ants, and large unidentifiable insects, I’m incredibly glad and grateful that Rick & Jiji opened up one of their houses for me to stay at. Living in a barangay in Consolacion (as opposed to staying in a hotel in the city area) has given me opportunities to meet the local people and do some “local” things, which is good for me because I’m not too into the touristy things of traveling.
Thus far, I’ve…
Probably more…but really, I just love talking with the people and getting to know them. It’s been really fun and equally as educational/informative as my time “working” in the anti-trafficking field.
I haven’t actually uploaded most of the pictures I’ve taken in Cebu so far, but here are some from my local area from the first few days here…the rest (i.e. barbecue) will come later hopefully!
This girl is the best — she doesn’t really speak English but she knows “hello” and every time she sees me walking down the street, she runs right up to me, smiles, waves frantically, and squeaks out a hello before waddling off.
Father Hynes told this story:
One time when I was here [in this Redlight District], all the little kids [points around us] were running around me like this. Two little boys, about 5 or 6 years old, came up to me and were very excited to play and talk with me. I chatted with them for a bit and then asked them what they wanted to be when they grew up. The first boy immediately said to me, “I want to be a priest!”
The second boy didn’t answer. The first boy then elbowed him and said, “You want to be a priest too, right!” The second boy furrowed his brows and pushed the elbow away. He said, “No, I want to be a pimp.”
Now you see what kind of environment they grow up in.
I’m going to try to section up the time I’ve spent here in Cebu, Philippines in separate posts rather than one giant post about 3495879 things I’ve done. Here goes!
The first weekend here, I had the chance to visit Good Shepherd Welcome House, a drop-in center for women who are involved in the sex industry in Cebu. Welcome House provides food and temporary safe shelter for women who are sexually abused or exploited, as well as supportive counseling and some case management, especially for heroin-addicted women (whom they call “shooters” in Cebu).
I spent the day with the women who lived there as well as some who were stopping by for food or other services. Some of them were working on the IGP (Income Generating Project — basically a “social enterprise”-like portion of the program at Welcome House), making necklaces that attached to conference name-tag covers. I thought that was an interesting product to focus on…
It was good getting to know the ladies — they were all pretty excited to talk with me and teach me a bit about their lives and the culture in Cebu, especially in the poorer areas and in the Redlight District.
In the late afternoon, before the night-time outreach, the social worker there (her nickname/alias name at the House is “Nice”) took me to walk around Colon Street where most of the women hang around for “work.” She introduced me to some women as she passed out condoms and tried to encourage those who haven’t been around the House to come by.
Much later at night, from around 7:00pm until about midnight, we went out to Camiguyan (don’t know how to spell it & I can’t seem to find it online), the Redlight District of that area. Essentially, it was a squatters’ area with all the “houses” (really just individual small rooms) and stores so close to one another that it seems almost like one giant house with hundreds of people living in it, walking in and out of rooms and running down the hallway-like streets.
I went with Nice and Jiji (my host here in Cebu, and a counselor/professor) as well as Eliza (a local UNICEF worker) and Father Hynes. Father Hynes is a German priest who’s lived in Cebu longer than I’ve been alive. He’s well-known in the community, especially because he helps distribute medicine and supplements to people in need. Also, he’s a riot — everyone thinks he’s hilarious (I have no idea since I don’t speak Cebuano…sadface).
Spent the night chatting with the young girls of the community who are involved in the sex industry. Many of them feel stuck in what they do for various reasons but the most common stories seemed to be:
It was heartbreaking to see so many of them just weaving in and out of the streets and rooms, some leaving our conversations when a customer came for them at their stores (one disguised as a KTV room).
Thus far, a lot of the Philippines is very similar to countries like the Dominican Republic (former Spanish colonies) but I had never seen a place like Camiguyan. It was definitely a new experience for me.
It’s funny how I don’t really mind living in a shack, I don’t mind “showering” in an ice-cold trickle of water (or only when it rains — shout out to Peru), I don’t mind having a huge cockroach a baby lizard and an army of ants as my roommates…but as soon as you unplug my Internet, I get upset.
Currently at a friend’s church facility borrowing their wifi. Let’s see how much I can do in an hour 
Yesterday morning I had planned to stay in and relax a bit before going out to Good Shepherd’s center in Cebu, scheduled for noon. Jiji, a family friend who is showing me around, told me that we actually were going to visit a kid in the neighborhood around 9am first. Having learned from Doña over my visits to the Dominican Republic, one always needs to be flexible when abroad (first lesson Doña and Maria pushed on me). So I signed off on my boyfriend (sorry, Brian!), got dressed, and met Jiji outside her home.
I wish I had brought my camera but I didn’t. I’ll try to take some pictures of the neighborhood though and post them up — but it’s very similar to the DR and most Spanish-colonized countries.
We trekked through the area, walking through people’s properties, stepping over mangy dogs and cats, avoiding the free range chicken and sitting ducks, hopping on stones over muddy pits, and pushing aside tall grass and plants hanging in our faces. Not too long of a walk and definitely not as treacherous as some of those hilly, rocky, steep paths in El Baden, DR.
We reached a shack of a home where two women — a mother and grandmother — were sitting. The mother was perched on a bench with a bucket of shelled oysters on one side and a small bin of de-shelled oysters on the other. Knife in hand, she was swiftly breaking them open and cutting out the meat. Despite her rapid work, the bin filled up very slowly since oysters are so small. She explained that she had to walk very far to get the oysters and walk very far again to sell them. She could sell the whole bunch for about 8 pesos — equivalent to around $0.18 ro $0.19 USD — which was her income to feed herself, her mother, her 6 kids, and her mentally-ill brother.
She called over her 5-year-old daughter Grace* and pulled aside part of her hair to reveal to us a fungal infection. They were really concerned because it was getting worse and because it’s on her scalp so close to her brain. The grandmother explained that they went to an expensive doctor and were giving Grace Amoxicillin now but feared it was not doing enough though they spent so much money seeing the doctor and paying for the medicine.
For once, I was able to speak up and use some past knowledge!
In the years I visited the Dominican Republic, I was a “pharmacist” for our makeshift medical mission clinic. Essentially, I took supplements, prenatal vitamins, antibiotics, etc. out of their original bottles, divvied them into makeshift pocket envelopes (I’m a skilled envelope maker now also, bt-dubs) and wrote Spanish instructions on each packet of how to take the medicine and what the dosage was. Ghetto pharmacy work but it worked (will not go into that right now though).
One of the makeshift prescriptions I had to portion out and instruct on were bottles of Selsun Blue that I poured into small containers. These bottles were given out to the locals we saw who had fungal infections and skin rashes. Years later, a friend of mine from home had a bad skin fungus spread across her back and her dermatologist recommended washing her back with Selsun Blue — so it’s pretty legit! Always good to know that we’re not randomly distributing gobs of blue goo in vain.
So I told Grace’s grandmother and mother about Selsun Blue, a common dandruff shampoo that one can buy in most stores. Jiji told me that they did in fact sell this in the Philippines and that she would buy a bottle for the family.
I mentioned personal hygiene cautions as well. If Grace’s scalp was oozing as they mentioned, that meant there’s an open wound somewhere under her hair and it was important that they refrain from touching her scalp with dirty hands (the mother kept showing us the girl’s scalp by pulling back her hair with muddy-oyster-water hands). They explained that bathing had become tougher since the hand pump that provided water to the surrounding houses was broken. They now had to walk far to the next pump to fetch buckets of water, which are heavy and for which they have to pay. This led Jiji and me to believe that the fungal infection may have come from or worsened because of them not bathing Grace enough.
[via charity: water's photo of the day]
I was reminded of how great a need there is for water well/pump maintenance and repairs. Many organizations focus on building wells, which I am 100% for, but it’s important that we not only build wells but also provide education to the communities about how to care for their pumps and how to repaid them if broken. I’m super grateful for organizations that focus on the whole picture, like Lifewater International. Or awareness and advocacy campaigns around well repaid, like the one done by The Adventure Project.
Afterwards, we bought some food from a local vendor (literally a teenage boy sitting outside with pots and plates of home-cooked meats and veggies on top of a kitchen table) and brought it back to Grace’s family. We said goodbye and headed back to Rick & Jiji’s tutoring center for the children of the area.
Actually, I’m in Consolacion just north of Cebu City.
But I landed in the Philippines with minor issues (like almost not being allowed to leave Hong Kong to come here…or having a 1.5 hour plane delay). Situated now at Rick and Jiji’s home. Already, an interesting experience! Tomorrow, I’ll be meeting with some people from Good Shepherd Welcome House and being thrown into a jeepney to go wander around. Will be interesting and educational, I think.
To Rick’s surprise, the Internet is working here. Assuming that it stays working tomorrow, perhaps I can finally update this blog!
Also, several Filipinos have asked me if this is my first time in the Philippines and when I say yes, they’ve responded with something along the lines of, “Ah, getting in touch with your roots is always nice” or “Welcome home!” I then need to explain I’m not Filipina.
I have wifi finally! But I’m about to board in a few minutes. #ofcourse
Part III of the Asia Extravaganza: the Philippines.
Already had some trouble with the airline but hopefully the rest of this trip is relatively smooth sailing…!
See you in Cebu…or Manila…or wherever I can get some Internet access
It’s currently almost 9:00am here in Hong Kong. I arrived yesterday around 3:00pm local time and spent the evening with relatives. Internet access is limited.
Nothing too exciting thus far.
And of course, I’m already covered in mosquito bites. But I’m trying to save the repellants for later on in the places where I’ll really need it.
Hong Kong is just an intermediary destination for me: somewhere that is removed from my home in New York City but somewhere in which I am not fully immersed in the unfamiliar.
When she asked me what I had gotten my Masters for, I mentioned International Social Welfare and Social Policy. Not really understanding what that means (Who does? It’s so vague), she asked me what I did and was planning to do work-wise. I started telling her about working in anti-trafficking and counseling foreign-born women in those situations, and that I was actually going to Cebu to meet with people doing similar work but focused on local trafficking. She nodded along, mentioned that it seemed interesting, and said NYC was a big spot to do that kind of work.
It wasn’t until later on when I mentioned something about women and children in oppressive situations that it occurred to me that this woman didn’t know what trafficking was. She actually thought I worked in traffic control or something (as in…transportation).
I shouldn’t be surprised, but the fact that I was made me analyze my biases. Perhaps I had assumed that this woman knew about trafficking because she had grown up in the Philippines, which is completely ignorant on my part. I can’t and shouldn’t assume anything like that ever.
First mini reminder lesson of the trip.