1 - STREET CHILDREN

ASIA/PHILIPPINES – During Lent “Guardian angel” sisters caring for street children in Manila make even greater efforts in response to the Pope’s call to help children in need

Manila (Fides Service) – “It is now a phenomenon of giant proportions. A human sea of children swells along the city streets, crowding at the few centres offering some shelter and a little food. What we are able to do for these children, each of whom we would like to hug in a warm embrace, is but a drop in the ocean”. Sister Maria Consiglia of an Italian community of women religious the Disciples of Jesus in the Eucharist in Manila told Fides. The Sisters, who have been in the Philippines for six years ago, are present in Manila and in northern Mindanao, where they provide pastoral care, assistance for poor families, organise adoptions at a distance and also try to help the hundreds of street children on the streets of the capital.
The phenomenon of street children in the Philippines worsened considerably in the 19080s when the country was plunged into an economic crisis. According to UNESCO the Philippines has at least 1.5 million street children, most of them in Manila, but the number continues to grow and there are no precise figures. One of the first organisations which began to help these children in Manila was Bahay Tuluyan which opened Welcome House in 1989 which cares for about 2.000 by progressively involving the older ones in assisting and educating younger ones.
There are many Catholic religious and missionary communities and parishes engaged in providing assistance to children in Manila especially in the slum districts of Tondo and Binondo where there is not only dire poverty but also rampant violence and crime. The Missionaries of Charity, founded by Mother Teresa, have a Home in Binondo where they care for the weakest children, suffering from malnutrition or disease.
Sister Maria Consiglia told Fides: “The children cannot go to school because there is no one to pay the fees, so they stay on the streets. Adoptions at a distance can help them and we try to promote this good work among benefactors in the West. They live in inhuman conditions in open air refuse dumps and for the many children suffer from Dengue fever or malaria we supply medicines and treatment”.
“For Lent, all of us – the Religious continues – sisters, novices and postulants have decided to make a special effort to help street children. Without children there is no future, the Pope said in his message for Lent and in the Philippines there are lots of children so the future is guaranteed. But they must be helped to grow up as complete and responsible people. We work with about 100 children in the slums whose families are very poor and besides material assistance we try to give them also human and spiritual formation.”.
The Religious concludes: “If you look in their eyes you cannot remain indifferent: the help we offer them is not much, for the rest we entrust them to the Lord ”. (PA) (Agenzia Fides 28/2/2004 lines 46 words 456)
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Pope John Paul II’s message for Lent 2004 >>

Dossier MISSIONARY CHILDHOOD DAY >>