By Vanessa M. Puno
As it celebrates its 24th year, the Handicapped Center Lourdes has lined up activities to highlight its services to handicapped persons. The center, based in Caritas compound in Pandacan, Manila, will participate in Pedyalympics on March 5 and in Summer Camp from April 20 to 29, both organized by Pedyakamp.
The Handicapped Center Lourdes marked its 24th anniversary on February 11 during the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes.
Four programs
It is with family atmosphere that the center shows its pastoral care to the handicapped, especially to the abandoned children, who are being cared of 24 hours by full-time staff, who act as their “mothers” who give them counsel, care and compassion.
The center offers early intervention, treatment for high-risk babies and testing services at various ages. It also recognizes and helps improve the skills and talents of handicapped and people in need.
The center offers four programs for handicapped persons and raises awareness in order to work for persons with various disabilities. The programs include providing residence for 13 multiple handicapped persons who are abandoned; day-care service for seven multiple handicapped who live with their parents; a free-of-charge physical rehabilitation for 117 people with disabilities and poor elderly; and advocacy for social awareness and action.
The center, led by its Executive Director Fr. Luke Moortgat, CICM, PhD, is registered with the Department of Social Welfare and Development and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Father Moortgat has been working with the center for almost 24 years.
People who support the center’s advocacy are government leaders, business communities, educators, medical professionals, students and religious men and women, and other donors.
Support also comes from the Asian Development Bank, Philippines Emergency Fund of Belgium and Philfonds of the Netherlands.
Faith-centered
In an effort to fulfill its mission to love and form Christian handicapped persons, with its core values of all-inclusive love, family -oriented and -centered in God, and to care for persons with disabilities and form them in Catholic faith, the center urges them to have a personal relationship with God and to live in harmony with persons in the society by providing a standard way of living, family and education.
It also helps deepen the faith of the center’s volunteers and staff to be able to strengthen them in their task even in times of problems and difficulties.
Founded in 1993
To provide appropriate services for the handicapped, the Handicapped Center Lourdes was founded on February 11, 1993, the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes. His Eminence Jaime Cardinal Sin directed Father Moortgat, the former chaplain for the deaf, to establish a center for multiple handicapped persons.
According to Father Moortgat, the same idea came into his mind when the cardinal had conceived the plan for the foundation of the center. However, without sufficient fund, he thought to dismiss the idea. But on February 11, 1993, when he had already planned activities for the deaf, it was decided to name the place Handicapped Center Lourdes, thus, making Cardinal Sin the catalyst of the foundation of the center.