Before our activity, my personal objective was to impart my knowledge on computers to the house parents. However, during and after our session, I actually gained more than what I have shared with them. My learnings were more on the realities of life, which are beyond my technical knowledge. Mr. Cenen, the program director, encouraged us to focus on our interaction with the house parents, than the actual computer program/lesson. Every day, the house parents interact with the kids. Interacting and being served by new people, like us, would be a new experience for them. It is very seldom that they entertain receive proposals wherein the beneficiaries of the programs are the house parents, and not the kids.
Our group was assigned to the Daycare house. In between our computer sessions, we got a chance to ask the house parents about the stories of the babies in their center and how were they brought to Virlanie. As a mom of two boys, it is very difficult for me to accept that there are really mothers who abandon their children intentionally. Some babies were left in the parking lot, garbage areas, comfort rooms, and some of those babies even have fresh umbilical cords when they were discovered. I can’t help but really question why they were chosen to bear these babies, wherein other couples are really trying for years, and sometimes spending a lot of money just to conceive a child. I have two close friends and a relative, who have experienced this, and they should have been the chosen as the biological parents of those babies. God may only be the one who can answer these questions. I understand that those parents, particularly the mothers who abandon their child, have a lot of different stories, and probably most of them are financial problems. However, if these mothers believe that they cannot support the lives of their babies, they should have sought help from their families and friends. And if they cannot give proper guidance, they should have sought help from certain helplines, foundations, and institutions. In this regard, I realized that our country lacks awareness about the existence and the purpose of these institutions. Personally, I do not know any institution in the Philippines, who can provide free counsel, unless I browsed the net. Or if I knew of a helpline number, my next concern is, is the call free? If I, having an access to the internet, have these doubts, what more those ordinary mothers who do not have access to media or to internet? How would they actually know that there are institutions who could help them, or could lead them to proper institutions who could take care of their unwanted babies, rather than leaving them in a public place? Upon searching the net, I came across Natasha Goulbourn Foundation, who has partnered with Department of Health to formally establish “Hopeline Project”, to provide a “phone-based counseling service available 24/7 to any individual who suffer from crisis and depression (healthpromo.doh.gov.ph).” Our local government should exert more effort on these types of projects, not just to avoid abandoning of children, but to address the crisis and depression in general. To increase public awareness, the HOPELINE number should be advertised more through different forms of media, including billboards.
Despite being abandoned, those children at Virlanie were very fortunate that they are well taken-care of. Aside from the donations from certain individuals, corporations and other institutions, the house parents really take care of them as if they were the biological parents. When asked if they cry when a child leaves and adopted, I was expecting a simple “yes”, but did not expect that they are really affected when a child leaves. During the debrief with Mr. Cenen, he said that house parents are being counseled as well, before a child leaves their institution and handed over to their new parents. There is really a program that weeks or months before a child will be adopted, there should be a certain “detachment period” to help the house parents adjust. I was not expecting that they become really attached to these kids, whom they took care of not just for months, but for years. For those children at Virlanie, God has really planned something better for them. Some of them might not be able to meet their real parents anymore, but a new set of parents would be able to give them a brighter future.
I have also realized that the house parents’ work in the foundation is a lot more meaningful than my work. If our judgment time comes, and asked by God, how did you serve and touched the lives of other people? The house parents can easily answer this question, while I… may be struggling.
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