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Tommy was
just a day old when he was found at the entrance of a town
church in Batangas, wrapped in newspapers and placed in a
box. His finder could tell he was newly born from the
fresh umbilical cord dangling from his tiny body.
He was
brought to the SOS Children’s Village Lipa. He spent his
growing-up years as one of eight to 10 children in a house
presided over by a woman who, while not their blood
mother, cared for them and provided for their needs as a
real mother would have.
Today,
Tommy is a young executive in a big corporation, happy and
raising his own family. He knows about his origins, having
been an inquisitive child who asked and asked questions
about where he came from. He got the truth from his SOS
Mother then, a Mama Luz.
Despite
his rather inauspicious beginnings, he harbors no
bitterness toward the blood mother that he finally found.
There are lots of happy memories at the SOS Village Lipa
that compensate for it. One of these is the close bond he
developed with Cardinal Gaudencio B. Rosales who, in 1999
as archbishop of Manila, officiated his wedding.
His blood
mother was even there by his side during the wedding.
There had been the question of who would stand with him at
the altar, for he had had two SOS Mothers as a child. The
two SOS moms graciously gave in to his blood mother,
saying, “We have had you all your life, give her this
privilege now,” SOS staff members recalled.
Cardinal
Rosales’s long ties with SOS Children’s Villages
Philippines go back to the time when he was parish priest
in the sparsely populated village of Banay-banay, Lipa
town. This is where SOS Kinderdorf (Children’s Villages)
International set up its first Philippine village in 1967.
The
assignment in the small parish village gave him plenty of
time to work closely with the community, and he enjoyed
most his regular visits to SOS Children’s Village Lipa.
He
developed close personal relations with the SOS children
and remember them with much affection. One of them was
Tommy.
The
Cardinal’s face radiated delight talking about Tommy, how
he grew into a man with the right values, how his positive
attitudes and feelings prevailed over his initial
misfortune in life.
“There is
a wellspring of goodness in him and I believe it has
always been God at work in Tommy’s life. God is still
writing his story. That is one thing that a lot of people
are forgetting,” the presence of God in human life.
“God also
manifested Himself through the people who actually
received Tommy during his most feeble, weakest moment. God
was right there when he was picked up as a day-old
foundling and brought to SOS Children’s Village Lipa.”
A success
story such as Tommy’s affirms the soundness of the SOS
Children’s Village approach to the care of disadvantaged
children. “Given the spirit of caring and unconditional
love that prevails in a family setting where they are
raised, orphans, abandoned and disadvantaged children have
better chances of becoming caring and productive
individuals,” Cardinal Rosales said.
“Ang
tao ’pag tumanggap ng kabaitan, magiging mabait at
mapagmahal na tao. Yung mga walanghiya, ’yun ang di
tumanggap ng kabaitan [Give a person goodness, caring
and love and he will be good and loving. The worst
individuals are those who never received love in their
youth and childhood],” he stressed.
Because of
this belief, the Cardinal supports the proposed
establishment of the Hermann Gmeiner Human Resource
Institute, an institution that will train, develop and
strengthen parenting and home management skills among
people dealing with the young. “This is the challenge to
families right now. A lot of parents do not know the first
thing about bringing up their children. There are mothers
who may be present but are not there for their kids when
they are needed.”
For 40
years, the Cardinal noted, SOS Philippines has been
training women to care for kids not their own (SOS Mothers
are required to be single women). So why not increase the
benefits by training more of those outside the SOS
Villages?
His
challenge was accepted, and today, efforts have been
initiated to raise funds for the institute, which will
provide this kind of training.
Businessman Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala and Senate
President Manuel B. Villar Jr. have donated P500,000 each
as their support for the project.
Ambassador
Antonio L. Cabangon Chua, on the other hand, is organizing
the First SOS Children’s Villages Philippines Invitational
Golf Cup to raise funds for the training institute.
The
facility, to be located in Lipa City, will serve not only
SOS Mothers and their coworkers but also people in
neighboring villages, towns and provinces and interested
groups who desire to educate themselves to be better
parents or caregivers to the young, said Emmanuel A.
Leyson, project consultant of the National Training Center
of SOS Philippines.
For
instance, Leyson said, the Ayala Group has expressed
interest in making the SOS training available to parents
of their young scholars under the Center for Excellence
program. Already, 90 mothers of such scholars have been
identified.
The
project has the full support of SOS Kinderdorf
International, conveyed by Helmut Kutin, its president,
during his visit here for the celebration of the 40th
anniversary of SOS Children’s Villages Philippines. Kutin
also received for SOS a presidential citation from
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo for effectively carrying
out, for 40 years now, “its vision and mission of
providing love and care to more Filipino children in
need.”
How SOS
began
SOS
Children’s Villages Philippines is part of SOS Kinderdorf
International, a private welfare organization established
by Dr. Hermann Gmeiner, an Austrian, for World War II
orphans. He came from a large family and also suffered the
loss of his own mother at a young age.
Believing
that help for orphans and disadvantaged children can only
be effective in a family environment, he established a
family-centered child-welfare concept based on the four
pillars of a mother, a house, brothers and sisters, and a
village. There are now 400 SOS Children’s Villages all
over the world set up along this concept, caring for more
than 40,000 children.
SOS
Children’s Villages was brought to the country by Austrian
diplomat Dr. George V. Winternitz and his wife, Suzie,
long-time residents in the Philippines who had been
sponsoring an SOS child in
Austria
for several years. Coming back from a visit to SOS
Children’s Village in Imst, Austria, in 1959, they
initiated talks on the adoption in the Philippines of Dr.
Gmeiner’s concept.
Dr.
Gmeiner, with some associates, came to the Philippines in
1963 on his return journey from Korea, where an SOS
Children’s Village was also in the works and was the first
in Asia. They held further talks with people, who welcomed
the idea. After he left, work began in earnest,
culminating with the opening of the SOS Children’s Village
in Lipa in 1967 on a piece of land donated by the
prominent Reyes family. This made the Philippines the
second Asian country after Korea to embrace SOS.
Recalling
that very first SOS Children’s Village, Cardinal Rosales
said there were no takers, because the idea was so
unusual. Only then-Bishop Alejandro Olalia, later the
first archbishop of Lipa, who “accepted all good things
that came to the Philippines, including the cursillo,”
gave the idea a chance.
The family
environment that Dr. Gmeiner conceived of has the SOS
Mother as the central figure. While she will be mothering
eight to 10 orphaned, abandoned and neglected children in
the home, she is required to be single to ensure her total
dedication to the children entrusted to her, teaching them
what love, care and security mean.
The
system, however, equips her with mothering skills through
a training course, thus creating what Dr. Gmeiner had
described as “a new vocational group of women independent
of men who run their own households” of children.
The
children, boys and girls of various ages, live with their
SOS Mother like a natural family in the SOS family house.
In the case of siblings, they are kept together in one
home.
Eight to
14 SOS family houses form the SOS Children’s Village. The
children attend local schools and live in close contact
with the rest of the community.
SOS
Mothers are assisted by Aunties, or SOS
Mothers-in-training, social workers, educators, health
workers and other support personnel seeing to the
children’s basic needs. The father image is provided by
the Village Director.
Cardinal
Rosales admitted that he was among the early unbelievers.
“We wouldn’t believe it. In disbelief, we asked, ‘How
could that be, having mothers for children who have not
issued from their flesh and blood?’ We wouldn’t believe
it, and so the Bishop [Olalia] challenged us, ‘Why don’t
you go to Banay-banay [the barrio where SOS Children’s
Village was located] and see for yourself?’”
They were
a group of young priests when he made his first visit to
an SOS Village. “We saw three houses and about 30
children, each child had a story to tell [about how he got
to the Children’s Village]. Even a grown man would cry
upon hearing of their miserable young lives. I never
thought there were such parents who could treat their
small children so heartlessly,” he said.
“I not
only made friends with SOS Mothers, supervisors and
Aunties. I made friends with the children,” for life, as
it turned out, talking with glowing pride about his
bonding with the kids, who came to call him Lolo Dency,
and their accomplishments as grownups.
There was
Candy, whom he held as a very tiny infant; Malou, no
longer a baby, who threw a tantrum as long as he didn’t
carry her awhile during his regular visits to the village;
Francis, who cried when he failed to recognize her when
she visited him at San Carlos Seminary where he was
shortly assigned after the Banay-banay parish. And, of
course, Tommy.
From the
first SOS Children’s Village in Lipa, six others have
risen all over the country in the past 40 years: Tacloban
in 1970; Calbayog in 1972; Cebu in 1980; Davao, 1981;
Manila (located in Alabang, Muntinlupa) in 1988; and
Iloilo in 2004.
In a
message for the 40th anniversary celebration of SOS
Philippines in May, national director Bienvenido L.
Delgado reported that the seven villages “are now taking
care of 910 children and youth and have already
contributed back to the community at least 964 of our
children who are now successfully integrated into
society.”
On its
40th year, Delgado said, “SOS will embark on new
initiatives that will seek to address the very
circumstances and conditions that give rise to child
abandonment.” Aside from long-term family care, SOS has
already started implementing programs toward preventing
child abandonment by strengthening family ties within the
neighboring communities of the SOS Children’s Villages.
Specifically, SOS has been helping less privileged
families through livelihood skills and vocational training
programs, counseling and day-care centers, educational
programs and scholarships.
With the
proposed establishment of the Hermann Gmeiner Human
Resource Institute, the SOS way offers a promise of a
better future to more children in need. |
