Prospero in the Philippines: Fieldtrip film
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Prospero in The Philippines: Fieldtrip Film
May 13th, 201019th February, Quezon City
February 19th, 2010Our last project visit is The Philippine Educational Theatre Association and luckily they are performing today. PETA work in the Philippines and in Asia, using theatre as an educational tool.
Their play, written by Vincent de Jesus, who also composed the music, is called ‘Juan Tamad, the Devil and the 5 million votes’. The stylish and modern theatre was packed full of schoolchildren aged from 11 upwards. The point of the play is civic engagement and it is beautifully done in the style of a Filipino vaudeville cabaret.
Juan Tamad is a classic Filipino character (Tamad=Lazy). In the course of the play, he becomes transformed to Tama which means ‘upright’. He grows from being disengaged to realising that not only has he a part to play in the country’s political process, but also that ‘leaders may come and go’ but the community stays on. Interlaced with lively and catchy songs and dancing, the young audience is rapt and even we, who are not privy to the Tagalog moments (there are some English bits, in fact it is in Taglish) are pretty rapt. I loved it and I loved the energy and passion that went into it. If all the schools in the country could see this, then maybe there would be those 5 million voters in this May’s election.
It is interesting to end on this note, as it is clear that there is much work to be done in the Philippines, much good will, much talent, amazing and clever organisations pulling their weight, but without proper government backing, without policies that work, without government funding, it will continue to be an uphill struggle.
17th February, Cavitas and Quezon City
February 17th, 2010Today we divided up. I went to film a loan collection with SEED and to interview Edwin from Space while Anna Louisa went to do an interview at the Virlanie Foundation.
SEED in Cavitas.
The loan officer was a handsome young man who used a motorbike to get around, which I was lucky enough to get a lift on. He was collecting loans from a small group of women who had taken out individual loans of around 1000 – 1500 pesos and were all repaying varying amounts. They were mostly small-scale retailers and this was their second loan cycle. The ladies were all full of beans, very funny and alert and certainly seemed to be benefiting from and delighted by the service. They claimed they were better at managing money than their husbands, who were, they declared laughing, ‘full of vice.’
At Virlanie, Anna-Louisa interviewed social worker Mildred Malate about the case of 18 month old Leanne. The intention had been to interview Leanne’s mother but on entering Virlanie’s mother and baby unit, it transpired that she was a mute, who had herself grown up in Virlanie’s disability home. She then became a prostitute. Leanne is the product of a liaison with a Canadian client. The Canadian has nothing to do with either Leanne or her mother. Virlanie are now trying to have Leanne declared as abandoned by both her parents so that they can put her up for adoption. With her father absent and her mother unable to care for her, Leanne’s story is sadly typical.
Back in Cavitas, I have finished filming and now I “speed” back into the city (an hour’s taxi journey) to the very lush Manila Peninsula hotel so that we could meet Lizzie Zobel and her assistant, Clarissa, for an introduction to ‘Readers Transform’, a programme that helps to provide books to schools and to train teachers to help students read more. The point here is that literacy is the ability to spell out the letters that make up a word, but that comprehension is the ability to understand what is written and in the Philippines, 11% of school students have very low comprehension levels. Four years ago, grade 6 students were tested: of the 1.2 million students tested who were supposed to have ‘high school readiness’ only 8000 students passed.
Lizzie and her partner thought that the cheapest form of intervention to improve basic comprehension was to increase reading – as she puts it, “to transform from children learning to read, into children reading to learn”. Her Sa Aklat Sisikat Foundation intervenes at different levels in order to create a classroom full of readers. They have teacher training programmes funded by the Philippines International schools and distance teacher training which is a pilot project run in partnership with the Boy Scouts of the Philippines. Once teachers have been trained, 60-80 books are delivered to their classrooms and students are monitored for the next two years.
15th February, Tondo
February 15th, 2010
Back to the Tondo district, by Smokey Mountain, this time to visit the Ayala Foundation’s Centex programme. It’s a pilot school, founded in 1998 which is run by the Ayala Foundation and the government to provide an excellent education to poor children who qualify for a place after special selection tests. The plan is to establish a methodology that works, to improve the teacher training and then to export it to other schools.
The school chooses 75 new students every year. Once a student has been accepted, he or she receives transport money, uniforms and shoes, lunch every day and specially designed textbooks. The Centex school day is longer than at other schools from 8.00 to 3.00 and there are 35 teachers for 500 students. That means 25 students per classroom which is a huge contrast to the public schools where the numbers can be as high as 600. Teachers also get an additional 2000 pesos added to their monthly salaries and they are trained by in-house teacher trainers and mentors, funded by Ayala.
In terms of curriculum, Centex has incorporated self-esteem as a subject which deals with things like conflict resolution skills, identifying problems and solutions. Parents also get special training on the subject of ‘discipline with dignity’ with the motto ‘praise in public and correct in private’. Students stay in the school until the 6th grade (12 years old) and are then matched up to a secondary school.
In stark contrast to the Centex school, we next visit a public school, the Antonio Villegas Vocational High School. It is in Tondo, not far from the temporary warehouse housing we visited a week ago. As soon as we walked in, students exploded into noise, some of it jeering, all of it loud! There are 2,235 students in this school, 64 teachers, which means 25 students per class. The school curriculum provides 6 professional subjects: garments, food technology, cosmetology for the girls, automotive technology, building construction and electronics technology for the boys. The school partners with companies so that the employment rate on leaving is high.
We are visiting because this school is a beneficiary of Ayala’s GILAS programme, which brings internet literacy to public schools. All 2nd year students upwards have internet lessons, with one computer for every 3 students.
The school staff then serve us a delicious lunch at 10.00 a.m. A huge plate of white rice and fried fish and bananas, and a very fragrant and delicious soup of chicken, papaya and green pepper leaves. It is called Tinolang Manoch soup and was Dr Rizal’s favourite dish. Dr Rizal is the Philippine’s national hero: a doctor, a poet and a freedom-fighter, shot at dawn by the Spanish in 1896 for suspected treason.
13th February, Navotas and Quezon City
February 13th, 2010
Another early start to go with EdM to the settlements built above the sea in Navotas. The majority of people here are fishermen, with an average family size of around 6 children.
It’s an extraodinary warren of houses constructed on bamboo stilts. The houses on the inside are remarkably clean as they have access to electricity and water, but there are no toilets so all rubbish and sewage go directly into the sea.
We walk on planks at least 5 metres above sea level. I can see why their biggest fear is children falling into the sea, which apparently happens relatively frequently. This trip has been planned for Humanopole, one of EDM’s French partners. They interview and film one of the families asking simple questions about their daily life. The woman they interview has 6 children, gets up at 4 every morning and says she is happy when they can eat 3 meals a 
day and go to school.
Meanwhile, Anna-Louisa spends the morning at the less scenic offices of the anti-child exploitation NGO, ECPAT Philippines, with its Director, Dolores, in Quezon City. Here, Dolores explains that the Philippines was one of the first countries in which ECPAT began its work. It was one of 3 NGOs to campaign for the succesful implementation of the first Filipino Child Protection Republic Act 7016. Today, it continues to champion the advocacy of children’s rights and participation as well as providing services to children who have been sexually expoited. Dolores highlights that collecting information about child sexual exploitation is challenging not only because of the geography of the Philippines, the taboos surrounding abuse and exploitation, the the autonomy of village level institutions, but because of difficulties in dealing with national agencies.
Despite a culture of denial, the exploitation of children for sexual purposes is rampant in the Philippines, with an estimated 40% of male foreign visitors to the Philippines engaging in sex tourism each year. Dolores explains that ECPAT’s current priority is establishing a centre in Boracay to educate the local community about the dangers of child exploitation as well as to provide psychological services to children who have already been victims of exploitation and abuse.
Anna-Louisa leaves ECPAT feeling disturbed. As we discuss our meetings back at Pacific Plaza, we determine to investigate sex tourism further.
12th February, Quezon City
February 12th, 2010We are in Quezon City today visiting the Third World Movement against the Exploitation of Women and Children.
This UN-affiliated project was founded in 1980 by the charismatic Sister Soledad Perpinan, a Sister of the Good Shepherd. From its roots as an advocacy movement to protest against Japanese sex tourism, the project now mainly provides shelter and transitory for women who have been victims of abuse.
Sister Sole, now confined to a wheelchair because of rheumatoid arthritis, is clearly an expert in deploying a full range of techniques to get attention for her work. This includes managing to get a letter to the Pope by persuading the Sisters who make up his room to leave the letter on his pillow case. She tells us the colourful inception of the organization, and regales us with anecdotes of her jet-setting social mission-led past: conferences in Brazil, speeches in New York: all for the girls and women that are rescued, some of whom appear shortly to sing us songs.
We feel privileged to be allowed to interview some of the girls, who tell us their harrowing stories.
One in particular sticks in my mind afterwards. She is 17 years old, and has been raped twice. In a quest to help her family, who were short of 300 pesos – they sold peanut butter sandwiches and some customers had not paid – she asked around about who could help. She was told that a teacher at her school could help her. He took her on a long trip on his motorbike, locked her up in a room, made her remove her clothes, and raped her. He told her if she told anyone, he would harm her family. She said nothing for a year. A year later, the principal of her school asked to see her. Clearly in cahoots with the teacher, he too proceeded to rape her. She found a friend to whom the same thing had happened, and people in the school began to talk. Her family found out and they attempted legal action. The case was dropped however. She is now in lonely exile waiting to finish her schooling, unable to be with her family. She wants to study to be a nurse.
That night, we go with a group from Ayala to Pasay, a street lined with girlie bars. Girls wearing sparkling pink cowboy hats and satin outfits lure customers in. Inside the bars, more girls, all wearing matching bikinis, are squashed like so many tinned sardines on bar-level stages. Under the spotlights, they dance for customers. Some look bored and barely move, others perform acrobatics. One nearly falls over trying to do a cartwheel on the bar. There are not many men at this early hour (it is nine p.m) but those we can see are very focused on the dancers.
A social worker arranges for us to meet one of the girls, who attends the Third World Movement against Exploitation of Women drop-in centers. We pay 2,000 pesos for her time. She has a son by one of her British clients; the child is now one and a half. She shares her flat with her cousin and a few others, sleeping six in one bed. She earns 150 pesos just to dance and upwards of 2000 for ‘bar fines’ when a client, mostly businessmen, Koreans, Singaporeans, Japanese and Americans, wishes to sleep with her. She likes the Americans best as they are the most understanding. She is exhausted. Her working day ends at 7 am when she goes to sleep, but her little son wakes her up at 10 wanting to play. However, she prefers to keep him with her than to take him home to her family and leave him in order to work. She has no real plans for her future but she would really like to be a cleaner – she loves to clean. She can’t find a cleaning job in Manila though.
11th February, Quezon City
February 11th, 2010
Today we are seeing the Inner City Development Corporation (ICDC) in Quezon City, where the University of Manila is based. It is an upcoming area, but one of the worst hit by the typhoon in 2008. As usual when visiting an EDM partner we take local transport: in this instance, an unairconditioned train jampacked with people which takes us to EDM’s director, Frank Renaudin. He meets us on the platform and then we share a tricycle rickshaw for the last leg of the journey.
ICDC was founded by Zeny de Jesus in 2005. She was a social worker who had managed to revolutionise the sale of handicrafts by getting rid of the middle man. She also founded a tricycle business, trained in microfinance and worked for CCT until she felt they were too big for her, so she founded a Co-operative. She is also a local councillor and the area has around 20,000 voters.
ICDC has a staff of 22, of whom 12 are field officers. Its principal operation is in loans plus savings with a special savings programme for children, but it also generates additional income through a low-cost funeral business.
The children’s saving programme has got 1,200 children saving at least 1 peso a day from the age of 6 to13. The money is deposited in a special savings account gathering 7% interest /year. They can withdraw their money at any time, but only from 1-2 pesos every day. Mothers often follow their children’s example and start saving, but other times they come to raid their child’s bank account as they cannot pay a bill.
After lunch, Zeny is eager to show us her low cost funeral business. We are unprepared and walk into what we think is a memorial showroom with a showcase coffin and a model inside it.
This is not the case. Inside the open casket coffin lies the corpse of a 51 year old man, his face heavily made up, who has committed suicide 2 days ago. His widow sits in white shorts and a t-shirt besides the coffin, her face expressionless. We sit on a floral sofa less than a metre away from the white and gold coffin. Relatives offer us brimming glasses of coca cola and slices of white bread. Children run in and out and peer at us. Zeny talks to the widow as we tactfully try to ascertain why he killed himself. He hung himself and left a suicide note, which we are shown: ‘Forgive me, but the problems were too much to bear’.
Entrepreneurs du Monde have heard rumours that this man was deeply in debt to at least 4 Microfinance institutions and a loan shark. To us, his widow says they had no debts. I ask what his job was: his previous boss ran a cock fighting business. A gambler. One reason for debts begins to show. It also explains all the caged cockerels we’ve seen in slum allotment areas. After some more conversation it transpires that he had asked relatives to lend him 15,000 pesos recently. He had stomach pains. Perhaps he was depressed. His photograph by the coffin is of a handsome, peaceful-looking man.
Eventually we leave, still shaken by what we stumbled upon. Zeny lightens the mood by taking us to the Memorial Services Shop. We admire her range of 9 coffins, all made of different material, varying in price. Often she manages to recycle the coffins, which helps to offer the poor cheaper funerals – that and their donated Volvo hearse. They tell us how the memorial shop was flooded to the ceiling in the 2009 typhoon and how they had to buy everything again. Zeny explains the reasons she started a ‘low-cost funeral business’: ‘it is, she says dramatically, ‘very expensive to die in the Philippines.’ Funerals cost a lot, although they do not need to.
Frank and Zeny then take us on a short stroll through some of the worse slums we have yet seen. It is everything one imagines a slum to be, including the open drains, which do not look so awful until you get closer and see how clogged with rubbish they are. Half-clad children chase after us, one small boy bullies a kitten, neatly pegged washing flaps and twists in the wind.
We come across another white coffin. This time it belongs to a 17 year old girl who fell ill after the typhoon and was in hospital a long time. As before, there are a few tables drawn up with men silently playing cards.
We visit the home of Evelyn Baluyot who makes ‘rags’ for tricycle drivers. Rags are round multi-coloured cloths which the drivers use to wipe down their faces and their vehicles, especially during the rainy season. She uses her loan to buy remnants from a factory and sews the rags on a manual sewing machine. She sells a pack of 24 for 20 pesos and makes around 100 pesos a day. Her loan requires her to pay 300 pesos a week back. She is very sad as she lost 2 of her 4 children in the typhoon. She and her husband and the remaining children all live together in what looks to be about 4 square metres.
9th February, Taka
February 9th, 2010To catch the Ayala Foundation’s 6.15 shuttle, we get up at 5.30 a.m. Drinking black coffee on the 34th floor, we watch the sun being overcome by drizzle before ascending further up by the back staircase to the helipad from where we will be taken to the Youth Leadership Congress in Taka, a 25 minute helicopter ride away. As well as two dashing pilots, we share the helicopter with Bill Luz, Vice President of the Foundation and Fernando Zobel de Ayala, President of the Ayala Corporation.
Because of a wall of fog, the helicopter wheels around and we land in a school playground where we find a presidential line of cars waiting to pick us up. The congress is attended by the CEOs of all the Ayala Group’s companies, including Ayala Land, Bank of the Philippines Islands, Globe Telecom and Manila Water Company; these companies have a combined net income of US$252.6 million USD. What is most revealing is how well these business leaders seem to know all of the young people attending. This is because the final decisions on who participates are based on interviews conducted by the CEOs, who say that these are one of the highlights of their year; that it is so refreshing to deal with curious and fresh minds.
While we watch the opening ceremony and the ensuing question and answer session, it becomes apparent to us how valuable and inspiring it is for these young people to be listened to by the country’s top business men and women; impressions have clearly been made on both sides.
8th February, Manila
February 8th, 2010
Today we are visiting the Ayala Foundation, the 49 year old social arm of the Ayala Corporation, one of the oldest and largest business groups in the Philippines.
The Foundation is to be found on the corner of Ayala Avenue but there is a clear distinction between the Foundation’s humble brown-carpeted office and the glittering corporate headquarters, surrounded by helipads.
Ayala works to address poverty in the Philippines in all its forms and the staff at the Foundation have already been really helpful to us in setting up meetings with their partners for our fieldtrip. We will be seeing 5 of their projects in the next two weeks and today we simply want to get an overview of their work and the social issues that are significant in this country.
One of the sector’s Ayala focuses on is education. There are 37,000 public primary schools, 6,500 secondary schools. 42% graduate from high school, 20% go to college and only 14% graduate from college. The government budget for schooling children is $100/child/year. Shocking to us, the average capacity of the teachers is only up to grade 4. The overall picture is of an education deficit; although tuition is free, there is a high poverty-related drop-out rate of about 35%.
We are going to be seeing their pilot school programme which helps slum children obtain a first-class education, and their internet literacy programme, helping secondary public schools connect to the internet and give children access. We also hear about their partnership with Nokia’s text2teach remote teaching aide which allows teachers to connect phones to TVs and download clips to help teach a range of subjects.
They also host a Young Leaders Congress where 80 of the Philippines most promising youth leaders are collected together for a 3 day congress. It is about to take place, and, noting our interest, the team immediately arrange for us to be part of their CEO helicopter shuttle service so that we can attend the opening ceremony tomorrow.
5th February, Manila
February 5th, 2010
We get in a taxi to ‘Smokey Mountain’ a former rubbish dump site alongside which a slum has grown up. This is the Tondo district: one of the poorest in Manila. We are joining Entrepreneurs du Monde (EdM), a French NGO specialising in microfinance, on a visit to their local partner,‘Uplift’.
In Tondo, there are about 1,000 families living in government-built temporary housing. People live in vast warehouse constructions built on two floors, with children and chickens running around, people cooking and selling food and a very loud jukebox blaring love songs into the sunshine. Official plans to convert these temporary homes into permanent housing never happened.
We meet our first microcredit clients (EdM calls them partners), both owners of tiny convenience shops – ‘sari sari’ stalls. In both cases, the loans are for 5,000 pesos, (around £63) to buy products. There is no bookkeeping material in one shop – the ‘sales invoices’ were square pieces of paper with amounts pierced onto a nail in the corner and a rolled-up, ink-smudged list turned out to be his bill for goods from the shopping mall. Uplift’s Livelihood and Development officer explained that the shopkeeper is a new borrower and that he should and would be keeping accounts, but that meanwhile that they knew and trusted him. It is clear that social capital and character analysis figures highly in the risk assessment performed by these tiny MFIs.
These loans are for 3 months with a 3% monthly interest rate and a weekly pay-back scheme. One shopkeeper is so happy with her loan she is already keen to take out another.
Walking on, we see a tiny white coffin and a makeshift shrine with an empty table and chairs planted in front of it. Frank, the director of EdM, explains that the chairs are there for people to come and pay to play cards and e
at and drink. This would enable the family to raise the money to pay for the funeral (PHP 50,000, around £700).
Lunch is in a fast food place where the French fries were particularly and oddly delicious accompanied by rather more murky package soup. High blood pressure, diabetes and cholesterol are common ailments suffered by Filipinos: their love of fast food one of the legacies of the American occupation.
We then proceed by jeepney – buses converted from American army jeeps – to Navotas to visit Uplift’s San Jose branch who were holding an orientation session for new partners. Around 26 women were crammed into the room, fanning themselves and listening while the Livelihood and Development officers explained how borrowing money and repaying it works