YOUNG people, whose physical condition denies them of fair competition in today’s fast-paced and multitasked world, try to rise above their disabilities.
Some 20 young people in wheelchair join over 200 individuals with similar condition at the Tahanang Walang Hagdanan Inc. (TWH), an organization managing a house without stairs in Cainta, Rizal.
TWH manufactures souvenir items, educational toys, classroom chairs, metal works, assistive devices like wheelchairs, canes, crutches, walkers and outsourced packaging of pharmaceutical drugs.
The young workers, some of them its residents, too, came from across the country, TWH Administrator Theresita G. Lloren told the BusinessMirror.
Building dreams on wheelchairs
ONE is Thelma Adangla, an amputee and single mother from Baguio City.
For about half a year she looked for employment in the mainstream, until someone told her about TWH.
So I grabbed the opportunity to come here, Adangla said.
With both hands amputated, her first job at TWH involved encoding of receipts.
Today, she makes money as a packer of pharmaceutical drugs and sends money to her daughter who is now in Grade 7.
Adangla’s daughter, called an able-bodied, lives with her mother in Baguio. Adangla dreams her daughter would become a physician someday.
Adangla took business administration and later, mass communication, at the Trinity University of Asia, but did not finish both.
She has been working at TWH since 2009.
Veronica Estrella, 30, arrived at TWH for work in 2007. She took data encoding in Negros Occidental.
Today, she works at TWH’s packaging for pharmaceutical drugs. Her husband, 44, also works at the packaging line.
They and their three kids live in one of TTWH’s duplexes. Her eldest is in Grade 1, her second in daycare and her youngest still an infant.
Estrella’s in-law takes care of the kids while she and her husband are at work. She wishes a cop, a soldier and a nurse in her three children.
Rose Ann Lita, 30, from Albay, is just one of the people at the packaging of pharmaceutical drugs. Like her coworkers, she gets paid every Friday.
Her works at TWH’s metal craft, gets paid every 15 days. They live in Morong with their two kids. They go to and from TWH in motor trike, which her husband drives, to work everyday.
“My husband and I earn a combined wage of around P8,000 [$168.48] a month,” Lita said.
She and her husband as early as today think of how they can be able to educate their children up to college.
Greener pasture
BEFORE her work at TWH, Vilma Macaubos, 31, sold garlic and offer nail-polishing services.
Today, she makes P1,500 a week for repacking medicines atTWH. There were times, however, when there were no job orders.
She has three children, one of whom is with her ex-husband, also a person with disability, and two with her present spouse, an able-bodied.
Macaubos complained of public utility vehicle drivers who avoid getting them as passengers.
She called on the government and concerned groups and individuals to help them earn more so that they can sustain education of their children up to college.
Vanessa Celso, 32, from Cainta, worked for a local call center for about half a year, before she settled at her current work at Tahanan in 2009.
She lives with her parents in a house, a wheelchair-roll distance from the main TWH building. Sometimes she buys rice and groceries for her household and pays the water bill.
She socializes and goes out with friends.
Celso, 32 and single, saves her money in a bank. She plans to finish her computer science course and find a work abroad.
All five women are thankful to the institute for giving them the chance to make a living, providing them their sense of personal worth and the opportunity to belong and meet other people.
If a more compensating job is offered, however, they would grab it and be grateful to the institution, for as long as they live, for the inspiration to dream for more.
Empowerment for PWDs
THE millennials at TWH earn from P5,000 to P8,000 in a month, Lloren said.
She made clear that TWH is “not a regular business entity” and cannot meet the mandatory minimum wage.
“The thrust is to provide persons with disabilities descent work,” Lloren said. Everyone is member of the Social Security System and Philippine Health Insurance Corp. the government health-insurance firm.
“Most of the PWDs are confined in the house,” Lloren said.
Being employed dignifies PWDs, eliminating the sense of being a family burden, she said. Some of them even help their siblings with school expenses.
TWH has a dormitory for singles that can accommodate 60 people. It has also six duplexes for families.
But most live outside TWH, Lloren said. This is to give way to newcomers.
TWH was founded by Catholic missionary Maria Paula Valeriana Baerts, a Belgian nun, in 1973.
Her witness of the condition of disabled persons at the National Orthopedic Hospital inspired its founding.
The Belgian government appropriated 75 percent of the cost of building construction.
Image credits: Oliver Samson