SLEEPING IN.
It felt great to sleep beyond 6 am after four continuous days of rising very early. Our housekeeper Lina at the condo where I was staying had a Filipino breakfast awaiting those of us rooming here. Fresh, sliced-open mangoes and Lina's tasty rice porridge with garlic and topped with boiled eggs helped us greet this new morning.
Amy and I took our time getting ready. I put on more citified clothes and put away my clunky black walking shoes and cotton t-shirts -- the dress of an inconspicuous filmmaker wandering among the poorest of the poor. Off and running, we arrived at the Visayan Forum Safehouse at around 10:15 am.
Greeting us was Cecile Flores-Oebanda, the executive director of Visayan Forum. The safehouse is a lovely residential home in nearby Quezon City for women and children who are victims of trafficking and who have agreed to stay long term to pursue their case against traffickers.
Cecile started out our visit with a PowerPoint presentation explaining the Visayan Forum and its wide reach into the Philippines to snag traffickers, especially in port cities. Most of the victims come from poor rural communities whose parents have no idea that they have handed their children over to harmful programs that intend to traffick (sell and enslave the young as domestic workers and sex trade workers). Thinking these children can help send money home to their families, little do these parents know what danger their children really face.
At this safehouse, we met some of the girls that escaped or were rescued from such schemes. One group of girls told of how after they finished the day's work they were locked in a room and for five years were kept from contacting their families. They never given cash and were told it was being held for them. They told us of their escape -- tying sheets together and then climbing down eight stories!!! The girls want to help prosecute their abductors but fear two things: putting their families back home in jeopardy and having to endure a legal process that may last up to 5 years. While they bond with each other and learn skills to help them stand on their own one day, it's not uncommon for some of them to leave the safe house.
VISAYAN FORUM HALF WAY HOUSE After our visit to the safehouse, we headed to the half way house located near the docks and piers of Manila Bay. At other piers around the Philippines, Visayan Forum and its partners against child trafficking have mobilized and trained the port community -- port police, ship companies, dock workers and their unions -- to be aware of potential or actual trafficking situtations. By raising the level of understanding of these port workers and officials, Visayan Forum helped establish the Multi-Sectoral Network Against Trafficking in Persons, "a national civil society-led initiative that aims to provide direct action, build capacities of partners, advocate for policy reforms and network. " This day we met newly rescued young girls. They were unbelievably young, some of them made up and dressed to attract. They seemed to be in a daze and some were filled with fear and confusion but were grateful to share their stories, their ordeal with us. SOME STATS: Since 2001, a total of 10,523 victims and potential victims of human trafficking in the Philippines have been served in the Port Halfway Houses, the partnership program between the Visayan Forum Foundation and the Philippine Ports Authority. The numbers may be even higher, however, because of the difficulty in accurately tracking numbers in all the country's regions. Globally, the number of victims of human trafficking in 2003 alone has reached 1.2 million, according to statistics from the International Labor Organization. (technology.inquirer.net)
Greeting us was Cecile Flores-Oebanda, the executive director of Visayan Forum. The safehouse is a lovely residential home in nearby Quezon City for women and children who are victims of trafficking and who have agreed to stay long term to pursue their case against traffickers.Cecile started out our visit with a PowerPoint presentation explaining the Visayan Forum and its wide reach into the Philippines to snag traffickers, especially in port cities. Most of the victims come from poor rural communities whose parents have no idea that they have handed their children over to harmful programs that intend to traffick (sell and enslave the young as domestic workers and sex trade workers). Thinking these children can help send money home to their families, little do these parents know what danger their children really face.
At this safehouse, we met some of the girls that escaped or were rescued from such schemes. One group of girls told of how after they finished the day's work they were locked in a room and for five years were kept from contacting their families. They never given cash and were told it was being held for them. They told us of their escape -- tying sheets together and then climbing down eight stories!!! The girls want to help prosecute their abductors but fear two things: putting their families back home in jeopardy and having to endure a legal process that may last up to 5 years. While they bond with each other and learn skills to help them stand on their own one day, it's not uncommon for some of them to leave the safe house.
VISAYAN FORUM HALF WAY HOUSE After our visit to the safehouse, we headed to the half way house located near the docks and piers of Manila Bay. At other piers around the Philippines, Visayan Forum and its partners against child trafficking have mobilized and trained the port community -- port police, ship companies, dock workers and their unions -- to be aware of potential or actual trafficking situtations. By raising the level of understanding of these port workers and officials, Visayan Forum helped establish the Multi-Sectoral Network Against Trafficking in Persons, "a national civil society-led initiative that aims to provide direct action, build capacities of partners, advocate for policy reforms and network. " This day we met newly rescued young girls. They were unbelievably young, some of them made up and dressed to attract. They seemed to be in a daze and some were filled with fear and confusion but were grateful to share their stories, their ordeal with us. SOME STATS: Since 2001, a total of 10,523 victims and potential victims of human trafficking in the Philippines have been served in the Port Halfway Houses, the partnership program between the Visayan Forum Foundation and the Philippine Ports Authority. The numbers may be even higher, however, because of the difficulty in accurately tracking numbers in all the country's regions. Globally, the number of victims of human trafficking in 2003 alone has reached 1.2 million, according to statistics from the International Labor Organization. (technology.inquirer.net)
SOME THOUGHTS: I've heard of this problem of trafficking for years now but never got close to it like I did this day. Cecile is a real hero. Posted on the walls of the port safehouse were dozens of newspaper clippings hailing her a hero in this work. She was a recipient of the 2005 
Anti-Slavery Award for her efforts in child trafficking in domestic work. I wanted to let you read her own words from an article written on March 23, just a few days before we arrived for this 17th Consuelo board trip. If you will read it, you will get some of the education I did. But you won't feel the same feelings I felt looking into the very eyes of victims who lived it and survived. My arms just wanted to embrace them and take them away from the pain of it all. Once rescued, or escaping, the next hard thing faces them. Confronting and accusing their captors and risking great harm to themselves and their families. Some will be heroic and some just won't because they can't. My heart and prayers go out to them all and to all women the world over caught in this net of deceipt and evil because of their naivety and vulnerability.
The Stark Reality of Human Trafficking in the PhilippinesMarch 23, 2007
The modus operandi is almost always the same - sweet-talking recruiters entice parents to allow their young daughters to leave the provinces and work in Manila as domestic helpers with promises of huge salaries. But once the girls arrive in Manila, the story turns sour with many of them ending up in forced labour or prostitution. Worse, they are “trained” for “export” to other countries to work as prostitutes.
“Trafficking in the Philippines has two faces - one is for local consumption and the other for abroad,” said Cecilia Flores Oebanda, president of Visayan Forum Foundation, a non-governmental organization working for the welfare of migrants. “Women are first recruited to Manila, where they are trained for deployment abroad,” she said. “They are taught how to undress, they are bleached, beautified, then initiated into the sex trade with foreigners as their first customers.” “That’s what they call on-the-job training while their papers are fixed for travel abroad,” she told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa in an interview.
As the government and such organizations as Visayan Forum step up the fight against human trafficking, the lure of a better life, a culture that accepts child labour as long as parents consent to it, abject poverty and the government’s labour-export policy still fuel the modern-day slavery and lead to estimated tens of thousands of Filipinos, mostly women and children, being trafficked every year.
Due to its continued notoriety as a source, transit and destination country for trafficked persons, the Philippines has remained on the US State Department’s tier 2 list of countries that do not fully comply with international standards against human trafficking but are making significant progress to fight the problem.
The Philippines used to be in the tier 2 watchlist but saw its status improve in 2006 after seven of 186 legal cases filed from 2003 to 2006 resulted in convictions. Oebanda said the Philippine government’s continued deployment of Filipino workers, mostly as domestic helpers, around the world, whose wages are a much needed source of revenue for the country, was exposing Filipino women and children to the dangers of trafficking. She noted that even Filipinos with overseas work permits could end up being trafficked. “Some of them secure work permits, but is their job really the work that they asked the permit for?” she asked. “We are worried and alarmed that our major source of income is people that we send out as migrants. We lack protective mechanisms and this adds to the vulnerability of people.”
The Victims Oebanda said recruiters often prey on young women between 12 and 22 years old. The victims are usually school dropouts, looking for jobs or a way out of the provinces. “Some women just want to get out of the provinces,” she said. ”They want to come to Manila or any urban centre. They flock to urban centres, where there is a perceived notion of better opportunities waiting for them.”
Gladys, 19, left her home province of Surigao del Norte in the southern Philippines for the central city of Cebu in the hopes of finding a job to help her poor family. The youngest girl in a brood of five said she was recruited by a relative to work as a domestic helper but ended up as a waitress in a nightclub frequented by foreign tourists in a red-light district in Cebu City. “I wanted to experience life in a city and how it is like to have a job,” she told dpa. “I also thought that if I can work, it would be a great help to my parents.” Dressed in skimpy attires every night, she often receives indecent proposals from customers who grab and touch her even without her consent while serving drinks or food at their tables. For three months, the advances escalated, and she said she feared she would end up like other girls in the bar who not only work as waitresses but also dance half-naked and perform sexual services. Unable to stand the exploitation, she approached Visayan Forum and asked for help. She is now undergoing computer training to help her achieve her goal of becoming a teacher.
Other girls are not as lucky as Gladys. In some cases, Visayan Forum has rescued young women locked up in rooms where they are forced to have sex with as many as 20 men every night. “The operator of the prostitution house counts the men the girls had serviced by the number of condoms on the floor,” Oebanda said. Even women who end up working as domestic helpers also sometimes face sexual abuse from their male bosses. Elena was only 15 when her parents traded her for 500 pesos (10 dollars) to a recruitment agency in the southern province of Misamis Oriental. In one of her many jobs as a domestic helper, Elena was raped repeatedly by her male employer when his wife went on vacation to the United States. The abuse continued for quite some time until she was let go by the couple and returned to the recruitment agency. “When I asked for help from my recruiter, I was merely told that since I was no longer a virgin, I might as well become a sex worker,” she told Visayan Forum. “I was so furious, I escaped, not knowing where I’d end up.”
While most of those rescued were grateful for the help, Oebanda said some of the women and children had been so hardened by their ordeal that they get angry at social workers like her. “They see us as getting in their way, that we’re taking away their jobs and opportunities,” she said. “Some of them even vandalize our shelters. But eventually they appreciate it.” Adapted from: Khaleej Times. March 1, 2007
MICROSOFT TAKES A LEAD ROLE
(technology.inquirer.net)
Stop Trafficking and Exploitation of People through Unlimited Potential (step-UP) is a partnership between Microsoft Philippines and the Visayan Forum Foundation to provide information technology skills training to former victims of human trafficking, and other underprivileged youth and adults.
The two-year step-UP initiative is part of Microsoft's Unlimited Potential global program, which so far has already seen more than P100 million in investments in different projects in the Philippines. Step-UP is supposed to benefit more than 10, 000 survivors and potential victims of human trafficking in the country.
The launch was held on May 26 at the Filipinas Heritage Library, coinciding with the third anniversary of the signing of Republic Act 9208 or the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act of 2003.
Anti-Slavery Award for her efforts in child trafficking in domestic work. I wanted to let you read her own words from an article written on March 23, just a few days before we arrived for this 17th Consuelo board trip. If you will read it, you will get some of the education I did. But you won't feel the same feelings I felt looking into the very eyes of victims who lived it and survived. My arms just wanted to embrace them and take them away from the pain of it all. Once rescued, or escaping, the next hard thing faces them. Confronting and accusing their captors and risking great harm to themselves and their families. Some will be heroic and some just won't because they can't. My heart and prayers go out to them all and to all women the world over caught in this net of deceipt and evil because of their naivety and vulnerability.The Stark Reality of Human Trafficking in the PhilippinesMarch 23, 2007
The modus operandi is almost always the same - sweet-talking recruiters entice parents to allow their young daughters to leave the provinces and work in Manila as domestic helpers with promises of huge salaries. But once the girls arrive in Manila, the story turns sour with many of them ending up in forced labour or prostitution. Worse, they are “trained” for “export” to other countries to work as prostitutes.
“Trafficking in the Philippines has two faces - one is for local consumption and the other for abroad,” said Cecilia Flores Oebanda, president of Visayan Forum Foundation, a non-governmental organization working for the welfare of migrants. “Women are first recruited to Manila, where they are trained for deployment abroad,” she said. “They are taught how to undress, they are bleached, beautified, then initiated into the sex trade with foreigners as their first customers.” “That’s what they call on-the-job training while their papers are fixed for travel abroad,” she told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa in an interview.
As the government and such organizations as Visayan Forum step up the fight against human trafficking, the lure of a better life, a culture that accepts child labour as long as parents consent to it, abject poverty and the government’s labour-export policy still fuel the modern-day slavery and lead to estimated tens of thousands of Filipinos, mostly women and children, being trafficked every year.
Due to its continued notoriety as a source, transit and destination country for trafficked persons, the Philippines has remained on the US State Department’s tier 2 list of countries that do not fully comply with international standards against human trafficking but are making significant progress to fight the problem.
The Philippines used to be in the tier 2 watchlist but saw its status improve in 2006 after seven of 186 legal cases filed from 2003 to 2006 resulted in convictions. Oebanda said the Philippine government’s continued deployment of Filipino workers, mostly as domestic helpers, around the world, whose wages are a much needed source of revenue for the country, was exposing Filipino women and children to the dangers of trafficking. She noted that even Filipinos with overseas work permits could end up being trafficked. “Some of them secure work permits, but is their job really the work that they asked the permit for?” she asked. “We are worried and alarmed that our major source of income is people that we send out as migrants. We lack protective mechanisms and this adds to the vulnerability of people.”
The Victims Oebanda said recruiters often prey on young women between 12 and 22 years old. The victims are usually school dropouts, looking for jobs or a way out of the provinces. “Some women just want to get out of the provinces,” she said. ”They want to come to Manila or any urban centre. They flock to urban centres, where there is a perceived notion of better opportunities waiting for them.”
Gladys, 19, left her home province of Surigao del Norte in the southern Philippines for the central city of Cebu in the hopes of finding a job to help her poor family. The youngest girl in a brood of five said she was recruited by a relative to work as a domestic helper but ended up as a waitress in a nightclub frequented by foreign tourists in a red-light district in Cebu City. “I wanted to experience life in a city and how it is like to have a job,” she told dpa. “I also thought that if I can work, it would be a great help to my parents.” Dressed in skimpy attires every night, she often receives indecent proposals from customers who grab and touch her even without her consent while serving drinks or food at their tables. For three months, the advances escalated, and she said she feared she would end up like other girls in the bar who not only work as waitresses but also dance half-naked and perform sexual services. Unable to stand the exploitation, she approached Visayan Forum and asked for help. She is now undergoing computer training to help her achieve her goal of becoming a teacher.
Other girls are not as lucky as Gladys. In some cases, Visayan Forum has rescued young women locked up in rooms where they are forced to have sex with as many as 20 men every night. “The operator of the prostitution house counts the men the girls had serviced by the number of condoms on the floor,” Oebanda said. Even women who end up working as domestic helpers also sometimes face sexual abuse from their male bosses. Elena was only 15 when her parents traded her for 500 pesos (10 dollars) to a recruitment agency in the southern province of Misamis Oriental. In one of her many jobs as a domestic helper, Elena was raped repeatedly by her male employer when his wife went on vacation to the United States. The abuse continued for quite some time until she was let go by the couple and returned to the recruitment agency. “When I asked for help from my recruiter, I was merely told that since I was no longer a virgin, I might as well become a sex worker,” she told Visayan Forum. “I was so furious, I escaped, not knowing where I’d end up.” While most of those rescued were grateful for the help, Oebanda said some of the women and children had been so hardened by their ordeal that they get angry at social workers like her. “They see us as getting in their way, that we’re taking away their jobs and opportunities,” she said. “Some of them even vandalize our shelters. But eventually they appreciate it.” Adapted from: Khaleej Times. March 1, 2007
MICROSOFT TAKES A LEAD ROLE(technology.inquirer.net)
Stop Trafficking and Exploitation of People through Unlimited Potential (step-UP) is a partnership between Microsoft Philippines and the Visayan Forum Foundation to provide information technology skills training to former victims of human trafficking, and other underprivileged youth and adults.
The two-year step-UP initiative is part of Microsoft's Unlimited Potential global program, which so far has already seen more than P100 million in investments in different projects in the Philippines. Step-UP is supposed to benefit more than 10, 000 survivors and potential victims of human trafficking in the country.
The launch was held on May 26 at the Filipinas Heritage Library, coinciding with the third anniversary of the signing of Republic Act 9208 or the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act of 2003.
Lunch time.
We headed for Manila Bay and the Harbor View restaurant off of Roxas Blvd and perched over the waters of the bay.
This was our last big meal of the board trip. Manila staffer Ray ordered for us faultless choices of Filipino delights!!
The ocean breeze was a soothing 
balm against the Manila humidity at high noon. The green mango shakes revived us, and the shade of the building's rooftop that kept out the noonday sun and its relentless 90-plus degree temperatures.
balm against the Manila humidity at high noon. The green mango shakes revived us, and the shade of the building's rooftop that kept out the noonday sun and its relentless 90-plus degree temperatures.I could see why folks would enjoy coming here. The view of Manila makes one think of all the history that had taken place here -- battles with Spaniards, with Americans, with the Japanese.
For me, this was my hangout when I was a teen. Here my friends and I danced into the night to the disco beats of the Hi-Jacks and the Tiltdown men at either the El Presidente Hotel or the Nile Restaurant. 
Yes, this spot brought me back in time, even though the landscape was cluttered with so many more high rises than when I lived there.
Roxas Blvd was also the first place my sisters and I were taken by relatives during our first visit to the Philippines in 1962. Strolling the boulevard as the sun set on Manila Bay and eating barbeque meat on sticks are memories that live on in me.
CHILDHOPE MOBILE CLINIC PROJECT
Our last official visit on this 17th board trip for the Consuelo Board ended with street kids and ice cream.
Childhope Asia-Philippines and its street education project reaches thousands of street kids in more than five major Metro Manila cities.
They estimate that between 75,000 to 100,000 street kids live in these cities, and their numbers grow at an undetermined rate. 
The kids are mostly child vendors, scavengers, beggars or helpers. Too many of them are prostituted out or sexually exploited. Even though there are better opportunties for these children, they choose the streets mainly because of poverty and their dysfunctional families where there is violence and parental neglect, among other things.
The funding partners contributed $240,000 in 2006. Consuelo's part was 15% of that. Among the 8 funding partners are the Rotary Clubs of Makati, Philippines and Honolulu, and The Body Shop.
The funding partners contributed $240,000 in 2006. Consuelo's part was 15% of that. Among the 8 funding partners are the Rotary Clubs of Makati, Philippines and Honolulu, and The Body Shop.
The Rotary Club of Honolulu donated a mobile clinic and board member Paddy G. got to inspect it for the first time.
It never fails. Who doesn't like ice cream!!!??? The Consuelo staff bought everything from a vendor's ice cream wagon and handed the treats out to a happy crowd of kids, parents and street educators. 
Hands were reaching out to grab one of the good things in life -- ice cream bars, popsicles, and waffle sandwiches. 
It never fails. Who doesn't like ice cream!!!??? The Consuelo staff bought everything from a vendor's ice cream wagon and handed the treats out to a happy crowd of kids, parents and street educators. 
Hands were reaching out to grab one of the good things in life -- ice cream bars, popsicles, and waffle sandwiches. 
We ended our visit with a group photos that I felt captured the hope and caring of a few for so many.
Even we with Consuelo were satisfied. Another ice cream vendor came along. Here Ray and I chose our favorite flavors as the day ended for us right near the place where the U.S. returned the Philippines to independence after WWII. See the ceremonial grandstand behind us where Gen. MacArthur formally announced the end of American rule in 1946.
That night, some of us went shopping at nearby Green Hills where bargaining is ok but prices still a little too pricey for the poor locals. Here my roomate Amy found some children's clothing for her family back home. I just looked, for now.
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