MANILA ESTEROS BRIEFING PAPER

Data by Urban Poor Associates

Background

Five Esteros surrounding Malacanang are due for immediate demolition, namely, San Miguel, San Sebastian, Quiapo, Uli-Uli and Aviles, according to oral or written notices given the people. This is to prevent devastation, such as, was wrought by Typhoon Ondoy, which submerged a big portion of Metro Manila in 2009. President Noynoy Aquino is concerned about saving lives when calamities happen. However the residents of these esteros who have lived long years in the area, when interviewed, denied they have experienced damaging loss of lives and properties, even during Typhoon Ondoy.

If floods hit Manila, the esteros are not the only areas endangered; no area will be spared, according to the people. What is needed, they said, are precautionary measures to evacuate the residents in areas prone to flooding immediately. Round the clock advisory of rainfall by PAG-ASA can be instituted, and an immediate warning can be given when the water from the dams is going to be released. A ready site for evacuation is needed. These are the people’s suggested solutions. For the estero residents, removing them and transferring them to a distant place outside their work area is not an option that will help them survive socially and economically. From the interviews the following are cited as the compelling reasons to allow them to stay where they are.

First are the social reasons. The older generation of estero settlers was born on the esteros and they have brought up their families there. So, too, the second generation who have just begun their married lives. For all of them the estero has provided the safety nets they needed both financially and emotionally. Social relations have been established among them that help them understand one another. In times of emergencies, such as, sickness, accidents, family problems, deaths, security issues, etc. the neighbors are the first to offer help. Their proximity to religious and charity institutions, schools, hospitals, markets, and transportation facilities, also helps them to survive the hardship of poverty by offering quick access to these institutions. Their ability to earn a living is the most important factor cited in explaining why they have to stay in the city. The tables below show what people do for work and where they do it, and how much they earn.

Estero de Quiapo, 118 Households

N.B. We interviewed all 118 families. Percentages for “Place of Work” and “Total Income” total 100%. However, under “Source of Income” some respondents who didn’t work told the interviewer they didn’t work, but didn’t add that their husbands or others in the family worked. In Estero de Quiapo only 70.6% of respondents reported on their “source of income” or that of others in the family. This situation is repeated in the other esteros.

Source of Income	Total Monthly Income		Place of Work
24.5 % are vending or peddling (newspapers, cigarettes, food items, DVDs, accessories, etc 7.8% are in the service sector (as service crews, clerks, sales representative, etc.) 4.9% are in the transport sector (driver-operators of different jeepneys, tricycles, pedicabs, heavy equipments, delivery vehicles, etc.) 13.2% are skilled workers 5.4% are unskilled workers 2.9% are in security sector (security guards, bouncers, barangay tanod, etc.) 1.0% are professionals (police, military, teacher, nurse, medical technologist, engineer, etc.) 1.5% are in government (barangay captain, kagawad, barangay tanod, etc.) 2.0% are OFWs 5.9% are pensioners 1.5% other jobs	Php 0-3,000	22%	51.7% are working within their community/barangay 23.8% are working outside their community but still within the city 18.9% are working outside the city of Manila but still within Metro Manila 2.1% outside Metro Manila/other provinces 3.5% outside of the country
	3,001-6,000	31.4%
	6,001-9,000	22%
	9,001-12,000	11%
	12,001-15,000	3.4%
	15,001-18,000	3.4%
	18,001-21,000	3.4%
	above 21,000	3.4%
ABILITY TO PAY, NEARNESS TO WORK The above data shows 46.6% of households in Estero de Quiapo have incomes of PhP6,000 and above. If 10% of income is allocated to rental expense, each family in this bracket can afford to pay a rental fee of Php600 per month; 31.4% can afford Php300 per month and 22% will need a subsidy or the government can lengthen the amortization period, or give a long grace period to start payment. 75.5% are working within their community/barangay and within the city. Only a small number, 5.6%, are working outside Metro Manila and outside the country. A majority of families live within walking distance of their jobs. Nearness to job sites is a big advantage for the types of work the people have, for example, a woman who cooks food for sale.

Estero de San Sebastian, 79 Households

Source of Income	Total Income		Place of Work
29% of the households are vending (newpapers, cigarettes, fish, meat, fruits, vegetables, drinks, viands, rice cakes, cooked food, jewelries, DVDs, sari-sari store and carinderia). 9.4% are in the service sector (sales, merchandiser, salesgirl, salesboy, recruitment agent, cashier, teller, clerk, service crew, bar tender, etc.) 5.8% are in the transport sector (drivers or operators of pedicab, tricycle, jeepney, taxi, delivery vehicle, truck, heavy equipment, etc.) 12.3% are skilled laborers (mason, carpenter, welder, electrician, plumber, steelman, house painter, foreman, supervisor, etc.) 5.8% are unskilled laborers (kargador, labandera, baby sitter, janitor, janitress, foreman, supervisor, etc.) 1.4% are employed in the security sector (security guard, bouncer, barangay tanod, traffic enforcer); professionals (police, military, teacher, nurse, medical technologist, engineer and OFWs.) 1.4% are professionals (police, military, teacher, medical technologist, engineer) 3.6% are pensioners 1.4% are OFWs. 0.7% are government officials (barangay captain and kagawad)	Php 0-3,000	13.9%	22.4% are working within the community/barangay 49.0% are working outside the community but within the city 21.4% are working outside the city but within Metro Manila 5.1% are working outside Metro Manila/other province 2.0% are working in other countries
	3,001-6,000	8.9%
	6,001-9,000	26.6%
	9,001-12,000	21.5%
	12,001-15,000	11.4%
	15,001-18,000	2.5%
	18,001-21,000	6.3%
	above 21,000	8.9%
ABILITY TO PAY, NEARNESS TO WORK Estero de San Sebastian has a higher number of household—77.2% who can pay a rental fee of P600/month. Some 8.9% can pay P300 per month. A lower number of families 13.9% will need a subsidy or easier terms of payments. San Sebastian is better-off economically than the other esteros studied. 92.8% are working within their community/barangay and within the city. 7.1% are working outside Metro Manila and outside the country. The jobs of the estero people are tied to the area where they live. If relocated far away they will not be able to find work easily.

Estero de Aviles, 129 Households

Source of Income	Total Income		Place of Work
38.6% of the households are vending (newpapers, cigarettes, fish, meat, fruits, vegetables, drinks, viands, rice cakes, cooked food, jewelries, DVDs, sari-sari store and carinderia). 2.6% are in the service sector (sales, merchandiser, salesgirl, salesboy, recruitment agent, cashier, teller, clerk, service crew, bar tender, etc.) 3.4% are in the transport sector (drivers or operators of pedicab, tricycle, jeepney, taxi, delivery vehicle, truck, heavy equipment, etc.) 6.0% are skilled laborers (mason, carpenter, welder, electrician, plumber, steelman, house painter, foreman, supervisor, etc.) 5.2% are unskilled laborers (kargador, labandera, baby sitter, janitor, janitress, foreman, supervisor, etc.) 1.3% are employed in the security sector (security guard, bouncer, barangay tanod, traffic enforcer); 3.4% are professionals (police, military, teacher, nurse, medical technologist, and engineer) 0.9% are OFWs 0.4%% are pensioners 6% Others	P 0-3,000	20.6%	25.2% are working within the community/barangay 45.9% are working outside the community but within the city 23.9% outside the city but within Metro Manila 1.9% outside Metro Manila/other province 3.1% other countries
	3,001-6,000	22.2%
	6,001-9,000	19.0%
	9,001-12,000	20.6%
	12,001-15,000	7.1%
	15,001-18,000	0.8%
	18,001-21,000	4.0%
	21,000 above	5.6%
ABILITY TO PAY, NEARNESS TO WORK 57.1% families can pay a rental fee of P600/month; 22.2% (P300/mo.). Some 20.6% of families need a subsidy or easier terms of payments. 95% are working within the barangay/community and within the city. Only 5% are working outside Metro Manila and other countries.

Estero de San Miguel, 410 Households

Source of Income	Total Income		Place of Work
20% of the households are vending (newpapers, cigarettes, fish, meat, fruits, vegetables, drinks, viands, rice cakes, cooked food, jewelries, DVDs, sari-sari store and carinderia). 7.5% are in the service sector (sales, merchandiser, salesgirl, salesboy, recruitment agent, cashier, teller, clerk, service crew, bar tender, etc.) 10.6% are in the transport sector (drivers or operators of pedicab, tricycle, jeepney, taxi, delivery vehicle, truck, heavy equipment, etc.) 10% are skilled laborers (mason, carpenter, welder, electrician, plumber, steelman, house painter, foreman, supervisor, etc.) 7.8% are unskilled laborers (kargador, labandera, baby sitter, janitor, janitress, foreman, supervisor, etc.) 3.8% are employed in the security sector (security guard, bouncer, barangay tanod, traffic enforcer); 1.2% are professionals (police, military, teacher, nurse, medical technologist, and engineer) 0.8% are government officials (barangay captain and kagawad) 2.6% are OFWs 2.1% are pensioners 1.4% Others	P 0-3,000	11.6%	22.3% are working within the community/barangay 53.5% are working outside the community but within the city 18.4% are working outside the city but within Metro Manila 1.4% are working outside Metro Manila/other provinces. 4.5% are working overseas.
	3,001-6,000	19.0%
	6,001-9,000	17.8%
	9,001-12,000	24.7%
	12,001-15,000	8.4%
	15,001-18,000	5.4%
	18,001-21,000	4.0%
	21,000 above	9.1%
ABILITY TO PAY, NEARNESS TO WORK 69.4% can pay a rental fee of P600/month; 19% (P300/mo.). A lower number of families, 11.6%, need a subsidy or easier terms of payments. 94.2% are working in their community/barangay and in Metro Manila. 1.4% are working outside Metro Manila and 4.5% are working outside the country.

CONCLUSIONS. Some 74.4% of the people on the esteros studied or worked within their community/barangay and within the city. Another 14.4% work outside Metro Manila and outside the country. A big majority of the household earners are in the informal sector, very dependent on the economic infrastructures that the city provides, such as schools, offices, restaurants, churches and construction activities.

Relocating the Estero residents outside the City of Manila will adversely affect their economic capability. First to suffer because of the loss of jobs will be the education of children and food for the family, which will lead to malnutrition. The ability to pay monthly amortization for on-site upgrading is sure; government will recover its investment. An average percentage of 62% of families in the esteros can pay P600 per month. In distant relocation sites which the people do not choose and do not like the government recovers very little of its investment, maybe as low as 10%. However, if people like what the government does, they repay, for example, in the Community Mortgage Program.

To dislocate all the households on the esteros in effect will add to the already increasing number of poor people nationwide who are hungry and malnourished.

It is easier for a family with a monthly income of PhP6,000 to survive in the city where they are now, because the cost of living is cheaper compared to that in the resettlement areas, according to resettled families interviewed. Transportation costs are minimal in the city, schoolchildren walk to their schools; workers also walk. Basic commodities such as fish, vegetables, meat, etc. are cheaper, according to people we interviewed from the resettlement areas. When one gets sick in the city, hospitals are nearby reducing medical costs, they said.

The receiving municipalities have no capacity to provide mass employment to the relocatees. A massive employment scheme would be needed to accommodate the families to be resettled, who runs into the thousands. Addressing employment problems should be the priority before uprooting families. Slum upgrading is a better development scheme for the urban settlers. Both the government and informal settlers will save an enormous sum of money from this.

The buildings designed by Palafox Associates are meant to make people on the esteros safe from flooding. Families will not be living on ground levels. They will be able, if there is flooding, to move to the second floor of their houses. If even this doesn’t save them, they can be evacuated as the people said on page 1 of this paper.

The buildings will have toilets and liquid waste treatment so the people will not pollute the river, an accusation often made by critics of the urban poor. There will be no families living on stilts in the water of the esteros that could block the flow of water that creates flooding. Also the families have already in some esteros (in parts of San Miguel Estero, for example) begun to clean the esteros.

The buildings designed by Palafox can be combined with gardens, mini parks, and tea and coffee shops that will make the community very attractive and a place tourists will like to visit.

The people in the esteros say they have not suffered much from flooding in the past, even during Ondoy. If the welfare of the poor is our aim, there is no need to move them for their health’s sake. If the reason for moving people is because their communities are not nice looking, then help the people improve their housing as Palafox Associates does.

If we all try to make the esteros a safe and beautiful site for families we can do that. As planned by Palafox Associates there is provision made for all the concerns of government, such as, water flow, dredging, toilets, and care for the waters of the estero.

Our old distant relocation methods did not solve the problem: 30%-40% of the families returned to the city and the slums. Government didn’t get its money back. Why don’t we try this new approach that is already successfully done in other Asian cities, such as, Bangkok and Surabaya.

Urban Poor Oppose Restoration of Anti-Squatting Law

9 March 2011. Urban poor gathered before Congress at Batasan Road today to oppose House Bill 2145, This is a bill amending Republic Act no. 8368, otherwise known as the “Anti-Squatting Law Repeal Act of 1997.” With them were the Task Force Anti-Eviction group composed of Urban Poor Associates (UPA), Community Organization of the Philippine Enterprise (COPE), Community Organizers Multiversity (COM) and Sentro ng Alternatibong Lingap Pangligal (SALIGAN).

Urban poor groups portrayed Occidental Mindoro Rep. Amelita Calimbas-Villarosa, the author of HB 2145, as a grim reaper. Urban poor people believe that HB 2145 is like Death, because it kills the housing rights of urban poor.



Jose Morales, president of ULAP said, “We don’t understand why she wants to restore the anti-squatting law. Does she hate the poor so much that she wants to pass a bill that would jail millions of poor people living in Metro Manila and other urban areas?”

“We don’t want a repeat of what happened during the Marcos regime, when he issued and implemented Presidential Decree 772 that sent to jail thousands of urban poor and their housing rights were suppressed. It took us years to nullify PD 772, so we will not allow the reinstatement of this law.” he added.

SALIGAN study of HB 2145, finds that the bill is an attempt to change the definition of “professional squatters.”

Atty. Jing Gaddi, urban poor unit coordinator of SALIGAN said, “The bill is trying to say that it will strengthen the protection for private land owners. However, it overlooks the fact that the social justice provisions of the 1987 Constitution limit and define such right to private ownership. Moreover, the bill says that if the occupants refuse to vacate a property within 90 days upon receiving a written demand, the occupants shall be considered professional squatters. This provision underhandedly broadens the UDHA’s definition of what a professional squatter is. What’s even more strange is H.B. 2145 does not prescribe any clear legal remedy for evicting said professional squatters.”

“HB 2145 has no basis in law for broadening the definition of ‘professional squatters’. In so doing, all urban poor will fall within the category of professional squatters and hence, automatically will be considered criminal. This bill also violates international covenants on economic, social, and cultural rights in which the Philippines is one of the signatories. We condemn, the attempt to criminalize again the situation of the poor through a blanket definition of professional squatter,” Gaddi concluded.

In a statement, UPA deputy coordinator Ted Anana said, “There are many efforts being done by the new Aquino government to provide decent housing to informal settlers. These will all be erased once this bill becomes law. We are just starting to plan the future of the poor and the poor are working closely with the government to reach the goals of providing decent housing for the urban poor as mandated by the 1987 Constitution and the Urban Development and Housing Act. Let us all be reminded that this kind of measure was proven to be a failure under Marcos. The number of urban poor increased. Jailing the urban poor because they are poor is not the way to solve poverty.” -30-

The Badjaos of R10

Youngblood By Princess L. Asuncion Philippine Daily Inquirer First Posted 00:12:00 03/01/2011 Filed Under: Local authorities, People Most Read I WAS already late for work, but the jeepney I’ve taken, to my consternation, was waiting for more passengers. Just as it was about to go, a man with a tin drum jumped in and sat on the back step. Then a woman with a very young child also got in and started to distribute small and empty brown envelopes. The man started playing the drum as the woman knelt on the jeepney floor, put the child down, and started swaying her hands in beautiful, graceful movements. I watched her more closely. She was very young, maybe only 16, but she looked like she was the child’s mother. Her hair was neatly fixed and she wore a yellow malong. I could tell she was a Badjao. Her face was devoid of any expression as she danced to the drumbeat. In fact she seemed to be unaware of her child she had placed standing in front of her. Then the child lost his balance. “Ang bata,” one could hear the chorus of anxious voices of the passengers as the child went down hard on the jeepney floor and began to cry at the top of his lungs. The mother quickly grabbed the child and stood him in front of a young girl near her. The girl kindly held the hand of the child while the mother retrieved the brown envelopes that now contained coins. Some passengers, feeling for the child, gave her some food. When the mother was finished collecting the envelopes, she bundled the child under one arm and hastily got off the jeepney, looking more concerned with the brown envelopes than with her son. But she stayed in my mind for the rest of that ride. I could sense that almost everyone in the jeepney felt bad at the sight of the mother using her child to beg. Me, too. In particular, I found it detestable that she didn’t care exposing her son to danger as she jumped in and out of jeepneys. And then I remembered the Badjao women I had met a year earlier in one of Urban Poor Associates (UPA) communities in R10, Tondo, Manila. I had gone there to check on a newly constructed office of UPA. Inside the office, there was a curtain that served as a “dividing wall” separating the sleeping area of the Badjao women from the rest of the office. I couldn’t imagine how 20 women could be accommodated by the makeshift dormitory. At first, the women refused to engage me in a conversation. I tried several times to talk to them, but they wouldn’t even allow me to go beyond the curtain divider, where they had retreated. They seemed to be very afraid of me with my camera and my pen. I had been informed the Badjao women of R10 didn’t know how to write and read. They didn’t even know their age or the date they were born. With the help of one of their leaders, Lydia, I was finally able to strike a conversation with them. The “ice breaker” was Kabutsuan. I thought she must have been 16 years old. I saw many similarities between Kabutsuan and the young Badjao mother in the jeepney. For one thing, they look like sisters. Kabutsuan told me she had just married. Her husband gave her parents P15,000 for the marriage. One by one, the Badjao women joined us in our conversation as they became more and more comfortable with my presence. They were giggling when they told me that one of them was “bought” for P30,000 because she was still a virgin. They were laughing and teasing one another in their native tongue. For them a woman is educated if she went to elementary or high school. They said that the P15,000 for the “purchase” of Kabutsuan was just right considering she never went to a school. At the time I spoke with her, she was pregnant. She didn’t know when she would deliver the baby. She just said they’d know it because the tummy aches. She also said she knew, like most of the Badjao women, how to give birth using natural birthing processes. Her husband has three wives. She said she was in Manila to beg and save every penny she’d get for her baby. Rowena, between 30 to 40 years old and one of the oldest among the Badjao women of R10, was preparing their food. She was frying fish and ground cassava which was their main staple, in lieu of rice. Rowena’s husband was killed by a group of extremists while fishing off Basilan island. The extremists cut off both his hands and stole the engine of his boat. She left Basilan with her two youngest children; the others stayed in Basilan. In Manila, she said, she goes around from 4 a.m. to 12 noon begging for money. She “earns” from P50 to P100 a day. She saves the money to buy an engine for their boat and to buy clothes and shoes that she can sell in Basilan, and for their transportation expenses. She said the women usually go back to Basilan when they have saved enough for the engine of their boat and food. But not to worry, she said, “they’ll be back again if the extremists steal their engines or if their boys’ hands are cut off.” Princess L. Asuncion, 25, works as a media advocacy officer at Urban Poor Associates (UPA), an NGO that works for the housing rights of the poor.

Spare us from relocation, Manila's creekside dwellers plead

By LEONARD D. POSTRADO

February 17, 2011, 4:32pm

MANILA, Philippines – Families living along the six major esteros in Manila Thursday asked Manila Mayor Alfredo Lim to spare them from being relocated to distant provinces as part of the joint effort of government and private sector to revive the Pasig River.

Members of the Nagkakaisang Mamamayan sa Legarda (NML), who live along Estero de San Miguel, said they will oppose any plans of the government to transfer them to Bulacan and Rizal.

It was first reported that informal settlers living along Estero de San Miguel, Estero de Quiapo, Estero de Uli-uli and Estero de San Sebastian, will be relocated to Towerville VI, Barangay Gaya-Gaya, San Jose del Monte in Bulacan and at Kaunlaran Village in Rodriguez, Rizal.

NML President Felomina Cinco said the homeowners had a meeting with President Benigno S. Aquino III last December 23 and presented him with housing designs appropriate for the esteros.

The designs, which were made by urban planning and design consultancy firm Palafox Associates, was intended to give creek-dwellers decent housing and at the same time not interfering with the cleaning of the tributaries of Pasig River.

“He (President Aquino) listened to our housing proposal and we talked to different agencies including PRRC and the city government of Manila regarding our alternative solution which is to live in new housing in the same place,” Cinco said.

“DILG has formed a technical working group to study the estero housing designed by Palafox Architects. That’s why we are surprised with the reports that 1,800 estero dwellers will be evicted. From the beginning we opposed relocation,” she added.

Meanwhile, Urban Poor Associates (UPA) field director Alicia Murphy pointed out that it is not necessary for the city government to transfer the creek dwellers to distant provinces but instead urged the government to conduct a so-called slum upgrading as proposed by Palafox.

“Although Victoria Clavel of Manila Urban Settlement Office mentioned that the relocation is yet to be made final and there is no target date when the estero dwellers will be relocated, this news roused fear among the affected settlers.”

Murphy said the families living along the creeks are an important asset to the city and not the polluters they are pictured them to be.

As proof, she cited the slum-upgrade on the stretch of Bangkok’s Bang Bua Canal where 3,400 families benefited from the program.

“The Bangkok Canal peoples’ networks demonstrated to the city that these canal-side communities are not polluters but are an important asset to the city, and they developed a long-term comprehensive solution to problems of land and housing in Thai cities,” Murphy said.

She stressed that the urban poor and the cleaning of the river are not mutually exclusive of one another, and that the shelter rights of the poor are as essential as the rehabilitation of the waterways.

The public must not be made to choose between the interests of the environment and the rights and welfare of the poor, Murphy said.

Brides and young prostitutes

Commentary

By Denis Murphy
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 05:39:00 02/17/2011

Most Read

WE WERE looking toward the backdoor of the chapel for the bride’s appearance, when suddenly the door flew open, blown in by the strong Batangas winds, and there stood the bride. Her white veil and bridal dress blew wildly about her. She was the very image of beauty, passion, mystery and the sacred.

The bride, Dianna Calderon, and Social Welfare Secretary Dinky Soliman’s son, Dino, got married in a loving, tasteful ceremony that had the row of bridesmaids sitting in front of us in tears, and the older men and women nodding as if to say, “Yes, this is the way it should be.”

It happens often in the Philippines that soon after you see something inspiring, you see or hear of something degrading of human beings, often of children. The same afternoon of the wedding, we heard of the 12- and 13-year-old prostitutes of Tondo whose lives are in sharp contrast with that of the bride. The girls are scavengers during the day, and at night they are prostitutes for the truck drivers, half-drunk istambays, garbage workers and the other rootless men who hang around the piers. The charge is P20 to P50 to feel the girl’s breasts and private parts (pakalog), while sex is P300 (palong-palo), often in a garbage truck. The girls have three men a night for sex on average, but some nights there are long lines. “I just lay there,” one girl said of her experience. The whole transaction is so crude, you can feel sorry even for the guys.

This Tondo situation was first reported on last week’s “Reporter’s Notebook” on GMA-7.

There is much beauty and goodness in the country, but also much cruelty. Sometimes we see the same troubling sight day after day. At the Anonas Station of the LRT a very young girl, 3 years old perhaps, often sits and begs. As best we can tell, people bring her there in the afternoon, coax a sad smile onto her face, put a tin cup in her hand and leave her. They come late in the evening to get her when the rush hour is over. For hours she sits there while people hurry past. Some drop a coin in her cup, but she doesn’t seem to notice. Other small children pass by holding their mothers’ hands. Babies pass in their mother’s arms. All the children look down on the little girl, wondering why she has no mama. It’s hard to get the little girl’s fear and loneliness out of one’s mind.

It is impossible for anyone who travels through the city to miss children pushing scavengers’ kareton or begging late into the night, or stretched out on the hot sidewalk worn out by life.

It should be very difficult to plunder in this country when there is evidence everywhere that plunder is food, medicine and housing taken from poor children. It’s easier to plunder, as Madoff did in Miami among his wealthy friends. Corruption in poor countries is brazen disregard of God’s poor children.

It is hard to determine who is guilty. The children are not guilty, neither are their parents really guilty once we know their poverty. Even the pimps may not be fully guilty, because they probably grew up in similar circumstances as the children.

The powerful are guilty, and who else? In the Old Testament the prophets singled out kings and rich men and women for special criticism, but in the end the Lord punished the whole people, nobles and servants, priests and people, rich and poor. Theologians tell us that in the New Testament we are saved or not as a whole people and not as individuals. It isn’t just rhetoric to say we are all guilty for the abuses done to children.

While many people abuse the young and vulnerable, there are others who give their lives for them. One such person is Sr. Felicitas de Lima of Iriga, Camarines Sur, who is no longer able to climb Mt. Iriga to bring literacy programs and agriculture coops to the Negritos high up on the mountain. She is well into her 70s now, but she still runs an orphanage for 120 children (real orphans, abandoned children, troubled children and those children whose parents, both lowlanders and Negritos, can no longer afford to raise them). She begs for money, feeds the children (now her orphanage is nearly 80 percent self-sufficient in food), educates them (she has built an accredited elementary school with regular teachers and sends the children to high school and even college). She gives each child a marketable skill and real, tangible love. She knows all their names, their backgrounds, special problems and their hopes in life.

People like Sister Felicitas lessen the guilt that may otherwise fall on us for our failure to help our less fortunate brothers and sisters. She needs many more pulling with her, however.

* * *

Before young people appropriate the success of the struggle of the Egyptian people to themselves and to the Internet, Facebook and Twitter, we should point out that when it came to actually fighting for the future of the revolution against the police forces in Tahrir Square, men in their 40s, 50s and even 60s, men with prominent stomachs and gray hair, were right in the middle of the struggle punching away and being punched.