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Expat2Phils.com » pagpipinta sa pulo » Jun. 30, 2008

pagpipinta sa pulo: Precious Women

Jun. 30, 2008 Newsletter by Tara C. Alverson

‘Precious Women’ is one of the newest programs added to the International Care Ministries in Dumaguete City, Negros Oriental . It’s designed to reach out to those women in the surrounding community who have been subjected into prostitution. ICM has been running this program in other areas around the Philippines since it’s induction over 15 years ago. Once a week they hold a bible study and give out 4 kg of rice to each recipient of Precious Women. Sol, the staff member in charge of the Precious Women’s program goes out and visits with each woman regularly. 27 women in prostitution have joined the outreach program. After one year the women will be assessed and if they choose they can apply for the micro-loan program through the ICM. It’s designed to help the women who want out of prostitution find an alternative livelihood. The ICM will fund any necessary training and education for them to succeed. Every year the ministry goes out and finds a new group of 25 women in each area for the outreach. ‘It’s a blessing to have 27 women, but the ICM unfortunately only has funding for 25 in each area.’ Sol informed me of the problem that she was facing with the new ministry she had helped start. She asked me, ‘How do I turn the two women away?’ Each week 4 kg of rice is distributed to each precious women’s recipient. 4 kg of rice cost roughly 158 pesos ($3.75 US). This is meant to last the recipient and their small family for a week of meals. One month for one recipient cost 632 pesos ($15.00 US). One year, 7,584 pesos ($180.00 US). The supplement feeding helps the woman and their families with a small part of the cost of living. It’s a simple way to encourage and allow them to look elsewhere for a source of livelihood. If you would like to donate to this cause you can either go to the ICM website and make your donation specific to the Dumaguete ICM, Precious Women’s Program, at www.caremin.com, or you can contact me via email and I can provide you the information necessary. My family has donated toys and children’s clothing which has been distributed at the precious women’s program. Any type of support means so much. One of the women is not yet 30 and just gave birth to her 8th child a few days ago. She informed Sol that she started prostitution when she was 14 years old. It seems so young but most women are introduced into prostitution at a very young age. The woman’s oldest daughter who is 13 has also begun prostituting herself. Nearly all the women subjected to prostitution come from very poor families, broken homes, and for one reason or another they were not able to attend public school. The government requires that all children be able to read and write before they are accepted into public schools, but if the family is poor and uneducated they may not have the time nor the resources to help their children. Some of the young women already have sick parents to take care of and younger siblings that are in their debt. Going into prostitution is often a choice that a young woman makes not for her own benefit, but for her family, and for her children’s welfare. Sol tells me that most of the women she talked to were neglected and sexually abused by family members when they were very young. Sex tourism is a huge part of the economy in the Philippines. You don’t have to walk down the streets very far to see it. I was in Manila a few weeks ago and I talked to a man in the hotel lobby where I was staying. He was from Arkansas, maybe 35. (We’ll call him John) John told me he was waiting for a girl, who was a prostitute. He alike many of the foriegners that come to the Philippines for the sex tourism travel to the different islands. ‘I guess I’m kind of wandering around, trying to find why I’m alive.’ He actually sad that, and I asked him why he came to Manila to find out why he was alive, he laughed. ‘Some of the guys I travel with are really abusive to the girls, ...they yell at them, push them around.’ Most the women in prostitution are treated as if they have no human rights, slapped around, beaten, raped and forced into other extreme acts of violence. It’s sick, but that’s how it works in the bigger cities like Manila. The economy here is dependant on sex tourism. It’s illegal, make no mistake. But the government turns a blind eye, just as long as they and their officials get paid off, all is favorable. It’s monstrous how corrupt the Philippines Government is, especially when it comes to the rights of it’s own people.
I helped the ICM survey the women in prostitution from around Dumaguete City. The first question was, ‘What is your occupation?’ I got flustered, thinking can I ask one of the girls that? But all the ladies answered, ‘waitress’, which confused me. I later found out from Sol that most the women work as waitresses in the bars around town that support the act of prostitution. The bar manager is the one who sets up the ‘date’ and is paid a flat some, usually about 500 pesos ($10 US). The woman who is referred to as the prostitute gets only 20% of that, being 100 pesos (A little over 2 bucks). Talk about a crime! If a woman has three children to feed at home she would need to have at least two or three customers a night to be able to feed and support her family for one day. I can’t imagine the physical and emotional warfare it must conflict on a persons psyche. Poverty and lack of education is a real problem to the physical and mental health of people living in poor communities. Here, poverty is the real reason why women go into prostitution, whether lead by their family or themselves to make money. It must be hard to subject yourself to that kind of degradation everyday. That kind of humiliation seems to have taken a tole on the women. You can see it especially on the faces of the older generations who lived an entire life of prostitution. One woman I talked to in the Cebu Center had been beaten and raped repeatedly by her ‘customers’, forcing her to do things no woman should ever have to suffer. And most the women have mixed feelings about foreigner’s that come for the sex tourism. Sure they have more money but often times they are the ones that are most abusive. In my Lonely Plant, Philippines guide book the authors talks about the sex tourism, putting the number of sex workers in the Philippines up to 400,000 in 2006, and over 20% of that number being children. Pedophilia sex tourism is a reality here in the Philippines. It happens. ‘There’s big money to be made in pedophilia, ...Despite strict laws, the number of foreigners charged and convicted for child sex crimes in the Philippines is so low as to be an encouragement to foreign pedophiles.’ - Lonely Planet, Philippines. I’ve seen some of the older men staring at the young girls, I’ve been right their when they go up and start talking to them. I hate the idea that I can’t do anything, but there’s a hot line called, End Child Prostitution in Asia Tourism, www.ecpat. net. I’ve visited it a few times. It’s horrible to think of children being the crime of such a hennas act. And no one says a thing against it. A sense of false pride, or a sense of what is called ‘Hiya ‘ in the Philippines prevents the people from speaking out. I think also they are afraid. Not many Filipino’s have a reason to trust their government to uphold justice, and those that have spoken out against such corruption have been made martyrs. Sex tourism is destructive at every level. From the women subjected into prostitution to their children, all the way up to the government. I don’t see the global problem of sex tourism going away anytime soon. Not with pedophiles and sex addicts fleeing to other 3rd world countries to find cheap ways of pleasuring themselves. Honestly, it pisses me off! Where are detectives, Benson and Stabler when you need them most? Despite the madness, the ICM continues to reach out on a local level to each recipient. I think it’s the practical manner of how they go about it that really makes a difference. Maybe only 5 or 7 of the 25 women in the program decide to find alternate livelihoods. But what a positive impact that has on those women and their families. This program means something to the community. The 27 women in the Precious Women’s Program here in Dumaguete tell me that just by coming once a week on Fridays, at 3:30pm for the bible study, encouragement, and rice. I think Sol is doing a great job reaching out to the women in the community. - - - - - - - - - - We are going to take the orphan’s dolphin watching in the coming week, depending on weather. They are very excited. Lot Lot, the young girl with cerebral palsy says she’s excited, but tells me, ‘I like snakes more then dolphins.’ I plan to travel to Manila in the next week or so to pick up my camera in the repair shop. I might go further north to Zambales (Near Mt. Pinatubo), where ICM has relations with a family that makes regular medical visits up the mountain to the remote tribal areas. It should be a good trip. I have bad news about little Blazela who lived on Paradise Island, Under The Bridge, of Cebu. She passed away last Monday, the 23rd of June. The complications from the hole in her heart were too much. She was 1 year old. The money you donated for her medicine kept her in the hospital more then 40 days. I haven’t seen her family since. I’m sure they are struggling to cope with the loss. It’s tragic. I hope I can remember her as long as I can, she really made a difference in my life. You may have heard about the typhoon that passed over the Philippines last week, killing over 300 people, not including the 800 plus, still, ‘missing’ from the ship ‘Princess of the stars.’ It shouldn’t had left it’s port in Cebu, as half way through it’s journey to Manila it was capsized by the pounding waves of the storm. Unreported pesticides and chemicals carried in the cargo hold held back the rescue efforts. I wouldn’t be surprised if the government had something to do with it. The ferry boats here are really old and not always the most seaworthy. The typhoon left it’s wake. Their is still some flooding in some of the northwestern places in the Philippines, like Bacolod and Iliolo. Dumaguete was not hard hit at all. Earlier this month I helped design shirts, trophies and paint the backdrop for the ICM’s Grand Touch Point. It’s a performance and worship contest between the recipient churches for the entire Negros Oriental Province. The theme this year was ‘Lord of Blessings.’ It was fun. I hope you enjoy some pictures I have taken in the past months on Cebu, Bohol and Negros Oriental. I hope to have new ones for you when I get my camera back. I have three months to go. I’m still painting and planning on drinking a huge glass of whole milk when I get home and then taking a really long shower. Thanks again for the support. Pagpipinta Sa Pulo : Precious Women Tara C. Alverson / T.C. Artworks June 30, 2008
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pagpipinta sa pulo Newsletter is copyright Tara C. Alverson. Reprinted with permission.


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