AFTER building over 100 core houses for the quake survivors in Bohol, a priest who lost his ability to walk has initiated the construction of a center for seniors, orphans, out-of-school (OOS) youth, physically challenged persons or persons with disability (PWDs), and battered wives in
the province.
Proposed to be called Pope Francis Centrum of Mercy and Compassion, the facility will consist of an orphanage, a home for the aged, a women’s crisis intervention house, and a center for the physically challenged and OOS youth, Fr. Fernando “Dodong” Po said.
The center can accommodate 30 orphans, 24 elderly, 12 women, 24 PWDs and OOS youth.
“The crisis intervention center is for battered and abused women,” he said. “After having gone through the intervention process in a safehouse, the women may be transferred to this center before going home to their families.”
The total cost of the construction was estimated at P36 million, Po said. The site-development plan and the estimate of the cost of expenses were provided by Arch. Eufracio Araneta.
The construction fund will be made available by the BuildAid of England, he added.
BuildAid, a construction charity group formed in 2005 following the tsunami in Southeast Asia in 2004, funds and constructs its own projects.
The Rotary World Help of Canada will provide the center with furnishings and furniture, Po said.
The center, believed to be the first in the country, “is a concrete response to the call of Pope Francis for mercy and compassion during his pastoral visit to the country last January,” he said.
It will be “a community, indeed, of the least, the last and the lost whom we should care for,” he added.
Mr. and Mrs. Bonnie Gable and Ghodon Hobbis of Rotary World Help of Canada assured that the Pope Francis Centrum of Compassion and Mercy will be realized.
The facility will rise on a 3,605-square-meter property in Barangay Looc, Panglao, Bohol, that Po’s family is donating.
“This is really a huge project,” he noted. “I leave it all in the hands of God.”
Image credits: Oliver Samson