children are the future: let's help them...

“Wala na tayong magagawa… ganto na ang kapalaran ko. Kesa mangarap tayo ng mangarap, kung wala naman tayong hinahawakan…”-victor

How will a child still dream if at his young age, he had lost hope already? And although he keeps on holding on to that dream, his belief that it would happen someday fades, then disappear, and don’t hope anymore?

Late night, that was two days after New Year, I watched the pathetic and very touching story of Victor in PROBE.

Victor was first interviewed in the show in 1988. He was just a child then, maybe 10 years old. He was a funny and naughty little boy. He always smiles. Whenever Che-che Lazaro asks him questions, he always responds with a smile. What a child.

Victor lives with his own and simple life. “Kalabit-penge,” a term coined for those children begging money on the streets. That was his work.

He was alone. He left his mother and step father that’s why he was living for himself. He left them for his step father batters him while his mother can’t give him a life a child of his age must experience. His mother was a hostess. Victor calls her “puta.” A brawny term that the child used to describe his mother. “Puta.”

After that interview, two decades have passed and PROBE Team searched Victor again. Twenty years. Where is he now?

Che-che, with the help of Victor’s former live-in partner and sister found him at Binan Laguna. He was a grown-up man already, with his beard and sudden wrinkles on his forehead. He makes hollow blocks. That was his only source of living. He has this kind of work, but is still not enough to build his family. With 100 pesos a day, he could not support his wife and four children. That’s why he still lives with his own until now and his siblings are in his partner’s mother.

This was his dream: to own a simple sari-sari store where he could get a little income and then start building his family. He indeed wants to be with his family, but he keeps on thinking how he would support them. With his unstable job and very low income, how is he going to do it?

Fortunately, kindhearted people lend help and gave him money to start. He now has his sari-sari store.

That was Victor’s story…

1988-2008. Two decades has passed. Slow improvement or perhaps, no improvement at all. For the not-so-fortunate people like Victor, progress in life is hard to achieve. He did not reach high school, how is he going to look for a stable job? Will companies or offices hire him? Will they give him work?
Let’s say we need to strive. Yes. Strive hard. Work harder. But even if you pay so much effort, and work so hard, it would just be useless. For a country whose focus are for acquiring more investors, and for more development of bridges and roads who are given a wide percentage of the country’s budget but are just being laid to the hands of corrupt officials, poor people will stay poor even though they work as hard as they can. That is why; more and more of our countrymen are loosing hope that their status in life will become better someday.

Poverty has been one of the great problems of this country. There maybe implemented rules and policies to resolve such issue, however, there are lots of apathetic who are sleeping in their golden beds, counting their money on their hands while poor people don’t know what to do to fill their empty stomach.

Victor is just one of the many who needs help. The government must make a way in giving chances to people like him.

To children, they must have a better solution to lessen or more importantly, to avoid the growing number of mendicants and street children. They need a home. They must be laid in a safer and comfortable place where they can start their lives and begin to dream. If the government can spend P15 million for electronic voting machines that were not used anyway, why not spend a little to the young ones. Why not make them feel there is still hope in this country and make them believe that if they do better and strive they will have a brighter future.