Heal, Earn, Affirm-Reaffirm & Transform (HEART) Innovation: Transformative Hobbies to Address Boy-victims of Child Prostitution
Creating peer-support and peer-mentoring avenues for boy-victims of prostitution and transform their victimisation into art expression and empower them as prime movers to end commercial sexual exploitation of children
About You
Location
Project Street Address
Project City
Project Province/State
Project Postal/Zip Code
Project Country
Your idea
Sector Focus
Civil society
Year the initative began (yyyy)
1998
YouTube Upload
Web site (url)
Positioning of your initiative on the mosaic diagram
Which of these barriers is the primary focus of your work?
Cultural acceptance of enslavement
Which of the principles is the primary focus of your work?
Mobilize peer groups and communities to raise awareness
If you believe some other barrier or principle should be included in the mosaic, please describe it and how it would affect the positioning of your initiative in the mosaic
Ending worst forms of child labour has been a global movement in every society, however, one thing seems to be missing: The face of the boy-child. Confronting and challenging the double standards of morality that minimises their victimisation as rite of passage, we aim in surfacing the iceberg of child prostitution with special focus on the most often mislooked, misunderstood and blamed-of-their-victimization: BOYS. Evidently, boys has been excluded from their bid to access prevention and protection resourcess that would address their victimisation. Being disenfranchised and rejected they would rather deny the abuse they experience, embarrassed of their sexual experiences (both wanted and unwanted) and rightfully believe that no one would understand them being victim but rather chose to believe that their experiences is a normal part of growing up – which is actually a pathway to agression and cultivates a distorted view of sexuality which society expect boys to like and look for sex rather than respect and wait for the right time for it.
The problem of boy prostitution in the Philippines is actually not invisible. It is the double standards of morality that keeps eyes wide shut. It is everywhere silenced by the conspiracy of tolerance and ignorance resulting to betrayal, guilt, suppressed anger and then later violence. This unfair social construct nurtures future aggressors particularly aggressors of women – since as a child, their sexuality has been confused and their innocence cheated and they grown up with that vengeance in the guise of “Machismo”. Boys think being "Macho" is a strength, but actually a trickery - a blind vulnerability that many wishes to keep. Boys are the most accessible and available children since they are left to take care of themselves and look for their identity by their own - and alas! a prey (both women and men) is ever-ready to take the advantage. Women and men of today harnesses this cycle of double standard and women I believe also hold the key to interrupt this cycle by raising our boys with equal care, guidance and protection the way they do with girl-children and as sure as the sun rise, they will be good sons, caring husbands, compassionate fathers and responsible citizens.
Name Your Project
Heal, Earn, Affirm-Reaffirm & Transform (HEART) Innovation: Transformative Hobbies to Address Boy-victims of Child Prostitution
Describe Your Idea
Creating peer-support and peer-mentoring avenues for boy-victims of prostitution and transform their victimisation into art expression and empower them as prime movers to end commercial sexual exploitation of children
Innovation
What is your signature innovation, your new idea, in one sentence?
Creating peer-support and peer-mentoring avenues for boy-victims of prostitution and transform their victimisation into art expression and empower them as prime movers to end commercial sexual exploitation of children
Describe your innovation. What makes your idea unique and different than others doing work in the field?
This innovation is conceptualized and implemented by those who have survived exploitation believing that peers-helping-peers have profound impact toward healing. A transformative behavior change package called HEART which means Heal, Earn, Affirm-Reaffirm and Transform has been developed that aims to reach exploited boys for sexual and drugs traffick purposes where they work, live, study and play and address inner healing, recovery, affirm and reaffirm their dignity, esteem and respect as children and transform their experiences into art expressions that earns income. The innovation is joint youth collaboration between KGPP and youth volunteers in Japan which was formed during the WYPS Japan Conference where the Philippine counterpart organizes an annual artwork festival while the Japanese counterpart collect the masterpieces, publish, market and sell them. The innovation has five simple steps for implementation: (1) all-year-round peer mentoring to cope their victimization, (2) artwork expressions, (3) packaging and trading their masterpieces to local and international partners, (4) collection of proceeds to finance their continuing education, and lastly (5) selection and training of a next-in-line peer-mentor.
Delivery Model: How do you implement your innovation and apply it to the challenge/problem you are addressing?
Boys are reached out in high-risk environments, trafficking routes, crusing sites, and drug trafficking areas by peer outreach workers for one-on-one interpersonal communications as an entry point for rapport-building. Once trust is earned, a team-building activity is organized followed by an all-year-round peer-mentoring and self-measurement of change activities. Annual gathering are organized for the artwork festival. Aimed for healing, they express their experiences through art and their masterpieces are sent to Japan to be judged, published and sold. Proceeds are sent back to finance vocational training and education. A selected few receives peer-mentoring training.
How do you plan to grow your innovation?
From victims to survivors, from survivors to advocates, from advocates to nation-builders and finally enduring every adversity in life to become Global Citizens – our changemaker’s pathway for each of our children enrolled on our innovation. Valuing the principles of human capacity for response in implementing this innovation, we transform “target populations” into “communities” to provide them a sustainable platform for them to discover inherent strengths to respond, change, and feel the ownership of the innovation and the responsibility in sustaining it.
By enrolling them in the HEART innovation, peer groups are actively engaged in all-year-round behavior change activities in their own communities, schools and environments while the artwork festival is the annual gathering of exploited children to share personal experiences and recovery, facilitate knowledge exchange, connect effective responses with peers and facilitate community-to-community transfer of learning other than creating their masterpieces. Through this we multiply ourselves and prepare second line boy-child advocates, and transfer our passion to empowered youth who will later replace us in our organization and continue this innovation.
Part of our plan is to raise a trust fund just for the artwork festival to both grow the innovation for it to generate enough income for children’s education and its annual operation. All enrolled communities will be formed into a federation in order for them to take the responsibility in mobilising their own resources to keep the innovation moving and expanding its reach to many more children.
Do you have any existing partnerships, and if so, how do you create them?
As an organizational mandate, we believe in the power of collective efforts and the principle of Community Ownership to sustain the impact of our projects for underserved and disenfranchised prostituted children. Through our youth-led network-building initiatives, as of 2008, we are accredited in 24 localities under the Local Council for the Protection of Children. We also have multi-stakeholders referral network and response mechanisms composed of key stakeholders in the community from NGO and Government bodies
For this innovation, we have a strong partnership with our Japanese counterpart who are mobilizing their own resources in Japan for the annual international art of children living on the streets. This collaboration was a result of the World Youth Peace Summit Japan Conference and part of our Global Citizenry programme.
Impact
Provide one sentence describing your impact/intended impact.
Boy prostitution has been recognized as social justice and public health issue whilst 80% of boys reached by the innovation has been transitioned to formal education and non-exploitative income generating opportunities
What are the main barriers to creating or achieving your impact?
For our advocacy, the main barrier is still of course the (1) “Double Standards of Morality” exacerbated by machismo and marianism culture engrained in the Filipino psyche that only few of us are called upon to challenge. (2) Sex and sexuality education is shunned by key authorities. We believe sex education is an effective entry point in suppressing child prostitution. (3) Lobbying of local policies and enforcement of local laws to protect children particularly boys or to facilitate children’s access to services needs tremendous and risk-taking effort. Despite the barriers, But of course, never give up – we are planting a seed that only the future can harvest. We will continue to plant many more seeds in order to achieve our dream, if not now let the future reap the reward.
For the transitioning boys to formal education and non exploitative work, the artworks festival is the component of the innovation that would achieve this. However, the innovation's barrier is the project stability and their is a need to raise enough trust fund to ensure its sustainability. When a trust fund is achieved, the income generated can both sustain education/vocational training of boys as well as growing the innovation expanding its reach to those children who needs most.
How many people have you served or plan to serve?
From the year of our establishment (1998) until March 2008, we have directly served a total of 89,000 young people and out of these, 80% were children and youth, and 20% were adults while an approximately 400,000 indirectly reached through our all-year-round trimedia (TV, Radio and Print Materials) campaign. Still, 70% were girl-children (But we are proud of it). For this innovation, we plan to reach (1) at least 10 communities of prostituted boys in high-risk environments with at least 20 members and 1 adult community catalyst per community, (2) organize 10 clubs in 10 elementary and high schools with at least 20 members and 1 faculty adviser in each and at least 100 volunteers that advocates children’s rights. (3) Recruit one local advocacy champion in each legislative bodies per locality in the Barangay and City level totaling 10 advocacy champion who will be regularly consulted to lobby local laws to protect children and prevention of commercial sexual exploitation.
Directly
Served: From June 2005 to May 2006 we have reached a grand total of 26,758 children and youth and out of these 21,746 were general audience of children in 13 elementray schools and 12 Barangays and a total of 5,012 most-at-risk children and youth in high-risk environments. Out of 5,012, 1,358 or (27%) were girls and out of these 187 were prostituted and 2,647 (53%) were boys and out of these 791 were prostituted. These were reached by 60 peer educators coming from their peer groups through behavior change communications. We also have reached 359 stakeholders from the governement and civil society in the advocacy components
Plan to Serve: For year 2008-2009 we will focus on boys 7-17 years old and (1) For urgent intervention, we will reach 100 sexually exploited boys aged 8-12 to avail psychological assistance, peer counseling and paralegal support and 22 of them with sexually transmitted infection for STI case management. (2) For capacity-building, 100 male peer educators has been enrolled for vocational training, 60 peer educators has been capacitated with behavior change communications and 20 had availed a training for life skills instruction. (3) For community organizing, 200 prostituted boys in 10 high-risk environments has been organized into a support group and 200 in-school boys in 10 secondary schools has been organized into a club. (4) For the enabling and supportive environment, 10 stakeholders from the Barangay Council for the Protection of Children and 10 policy champions had been identified from local legislatures in the Barangay and City councils
Indirectly
Served: We have reached 26,358 youth and adult audience during special events such as women's month, AIDS Candlelight memorial, children's month celebration, world AIDS Day while at least 30,000 of our information, education, and communications (IEC) print materials has been distributed to the genral public and radio and TV campaign had reach an approximate 500,000 audience in primetime slots.
Planned to serve: For this innovation, we are expecting to indirectly reach at least 10,000 community adults and parents in our targetted 10 communities and 10 schools in 2 years time (2008-2009).
Please list any other measures of the impact of your innovation?
The importance of measuring progress which is most often taken for granted urged us to develop our own self-measurement of change tool that focus on the “self”. Like our implementation plan, our impact measurement plan has also five simple steps. SELF-ASSESSMENT OF RISKS AND SELF-TARGETED BENCHMARKS; SELF-EXPRESSIONS AND DREAM-BUILDING ACTIVITIES; SELF-MEASUREMENT OF PROGRESS; SELF-RECOGNITION OF STRENGTHS, WEAKNESS, SUCCESS AND FAILURES; SELF-REFLECTIONS AND PEER-SHARING OF LESSONS LEARNED
These are facilitated periodically and the results are our basis for policy formation, programme (re)planning and implementation
Is there a policy intervention element to your innovation?
We will promote evidenced-based policies and programmes informed-by-local-experiences in the local legislature for the protection of children through our policy champions and review their compliance to international laws and commitments signed by our country such as the 1989 UNCRC and UNGASS Declaration on Children and the MDGs and in reminding organizations their commitment when they drafted the Framework of Action against the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children that clearly declares that “both boys and girls are equally vulnerable to commercial sexual exploitation.... As such, there is a need to ensure that there is no gender bias in policies and initiatives for the protection of girls and boys from commercial sexual exploitation”. Lobbying the installation of children-representatives in the Barangay Council for the Protection of Children to ensure they are involved as key decision-makers and actors and not just as tokens and beneficiaries shall be ensured.
Exactly who are the beneficiaries of your innovation?
The innovation will target three-fold partner-beneficiaires:
(A) Prime Movers – are male children aged 17 years old and below who are already engaged in commercial sexual exploitation who will be reached in high-risk zones both in micro and macro-level trafficking points (tourist areas, cruising sites, resorts and borders of highly urbanized cities. This innovation will install peer education system in 10 communities where they are deployed for behavior change communications and peer-mentoring.
(B) The Champions – are the policy-makers from the local legislatures and decision makers (head of schools and key stakeholders) and parents of child-victims and those whose children/family situation are highly vulnerable who will be mobilized to sustain the innovation in the community level.
This Entry is about (Issues)
Sustainability
How is your initiative financed (or how do you expect your initiative will be financed)?
From the year of our formation in 1998, implementation of this innovation has been unstable but continuously survived by collecting “leftovers” from other well-funded projects because there are no people who take interest with boys. But with some small grants like the YouthActionNet small grant, a UNODC small grant for drug prevention and the cash award we received when we won a national award in the Philippines were very helpful in sustaining the innovation. With creativity, we expect ourselves to (1) look for funding agency to make the programme a stable and well-directed project, (2) mobilize community funds from the LGU to stimulate community ownership, and (3) organize events that both raise awareness and earns revenue and conceptualise an income generating project that is self-liquidating
If known, provide information on your finances and organization
Staff:
From May 1998 - July 2005, our organization is sustained by 50 active volunteers and on July 2005 we have started our first funded project with UNICEF on HIV prevention for most-at-risk children with 5 project staff. On September 2006, UNICEF extended the project for another two years and our workforce increased to 13 project staff. On April 2007, the Global Fund support arrived for treatment care and support project for people living with HIV and an additional 6 HIV-positive staff was included totalling 19 staff with 60 peer educators and 20 peer advocates as frontlines in our community-based change projects.
Finances:
Our annual budget for the period 2005-2006 is 1,875,578 PhP comprising 1,604,290 PhP from UNICEF and 271,288.00 self-generated funds for admin cost. For the period 2006-2008 is 9,353,199.92 PhP comprising 7,583,200 PhP from UNICEF and 1,769.999.92 PhP self-generated funds for admin costs. For Global Fund for the period 2007 - 2008 is 1.6 million pesos.
For this innovation:
From1998-2008, we have collected a total of 9,000 USD unrestricted funds coming from different sources. From the National Youth Commission 1,000 USD in 2003, from the UNODC is 4,000 USD in 2004, from the International Youth Foundation 500 USD in 2005 and from the Artworks proceed is 3,500 USD in 2006.
What is the potential demand for your innovation?
The potential demand for the innovation is very high since we are one of the very few NGOs with a special programme for boy prostitution and we are expecting that in 2 years time, our organization will be burdened in raising an adequate amount of fund to support the community-based interventions and distinctive individual needs of the increasing number of boys coming out to seek support for protection and prevention services. Currently, we have 891 comercially sexually exploited boys in extreme exploitative conditions and only 6 field staff and 60 volunteers are regulalry mobilized to reach them. A center-based programme is foreseen and this will cost a big amount for its operation and management. This will be another risk-taking endeavour challenging us in the future.
What are the main barriers to financial sustainability?
The following financial difficulties are foreseen:
(1) Trust fund for organization of clubs where members are empowered to raise funds to sustain their own activities. (2) No funding agencies focused on boy-children and at present we are still pressured to reach more females and invest much on girl-children. (3) No funding agency that provides seed capital for income generating projects. (4) We are needing support for the construction of our website. (4) and our very Big Dream that by 2015 together with the MDGs we already have a school for children in difficult circumstances that amounts to 10 million pesos (220,000 USD).
The Story
What is the origin of this innovation? Tell us your story.
In 1998, one painful childhood inspired the establishment of the Kabataang Gabay sa Positibong Pamumuhay – a local youth-led NGO dedicated in working most-at-risk and vulnerable children in the Southern Philippines. It was then when the child was helped by the Department of Social Welfare and Development in Region 6 and was tasked to organize a local Pag-asa Youth Association in exchange for an educational assistance for college. He then took the opportunity to return to the streets and give hope to street children and organized the PYA in one Barangay in Iloilo City. The first concept of the group first took form during the Peer Counseling for Positive Lifestyle Promotion Training sponsored by the DSWD. The group started focusing with commercial sexual exploitation of children. When their terms of office ended in 1999, they continued the group as an arm of the DSWD to activate and strengthen PYA in the region. In 2001, they offered their voluntary services for the AIDS Surveillance and Education Project under a local NGO funded by USAID. Their work with HIV prevention among child prostitutes was recognized by the National Youth Commission and Metrobank Foundation where they were awarded as one of the most outstanding youth organization in the Philippines in 2003. In 2004, the group was officially incorporated and during that year the President received the prestigious YAN award from the International Youth Foundation and Nokia. The cash award keeps the innovation moving at a slow pace and for 10 years now, they had steadily grown and expanded their presence in 5 provinces, 5 cities/municipalities and 24 Barangays and organized 3 peer educator’s federation and a 200 workforce of staff, volunteers and supporters. Still powered by the Youth! MABUHAY and Kabataang Filipino!
Please provide a personal bio. Note this may be used in Changemakers marketing material
John Piermont Montilla is a determined survivor and steady fighter, founded the Kabataang Gabay sa Positibong Pamumuhay based in Iloilo City - the heart of the Country that brings its members to high-risk environments and young people in highly compromised situations right where they live, study, work and play. Presently he is deeply involved on child research, community organizing, advocacy policy and fund raising for the education of street children. The organization is a source of his healing and others healing he envision that his work would result to a self-directed and self-sufficient young people capable of addressing own vulnerabilities and risks, raising own levels of aspiration and achieving own dreams and hopes toward development of self, family, community, country and Humanity
Emphasis of Work
The emphasis of this innovation is part and parcel of our more profound goal toward Global Citizenry
When I receved a training scholarship facilitated by the International Youth Foundation, me and my fellow YAN fellows were given the chance to have a symposium with students from the American Community School (ACS) in Surbiton. As one of the panelist, I was asked by a student.
"Is it the responsibility of First World countries to help the Third World countries?"
I was dumbfounded and does not know what to answer... I just meditated for 10 seconds and ask the great spirit for Wisdom and replied:
"I came here with this opportunity not as a Filipino or an Asian but as a Global Citizen... I do not know what happened in History why are there many races... all I know is that there is only one race - the Human Race... We are all brethrens and we should be helping each other... you are my brother and I hope you accept me too as your brother."
This innovation is a response to end modern day slavery and a situation that out there outside our homes, our cities, provinces, countries and continents there are least of our brethren needs our help. Global Citizenry is not about passports but its about living without boundaries (religion, social class, ethnicity, races, wealth and even nationalities) that in our own personal lives we believe each every one of us are interconnected to each other in some ways and take responsibility of the other's needs as the great Pope John Paul II said: "No one is so Poor, that He has Nothing to Give, and No one is so Rich that He has Nothing to Receive"
In the name of Humanity, I remain.
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Comments
Hi,
It seems as though you have a lot of absolutely wonderful initiatives with your program. I think it would be helpful for me if there was a clear mission statement that encapsulated all of the objectives you have, along with a clear and concise lists of the main areas that you work in as there seems to be many.
I would also like to know the specific vulnerabilities that boys face vs. girls. Is it local demand, sex tourism, or other sources of demand that contribute to the problem?
In your beneficiary list, can you tell me more about what these benficiaries will receive in terms of skills training, etc? What types of skills? How long will they be enrolled for? You mention training of peer mentors, which is fantastic. Do you have a formal system in place to continue peer mentor training out of the current withdrawn/ prevented children?
Also, have you considered community and religious partnerships to help change social norms in this way?
I look forward to learning more about your program!
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Gender Equality and Human Trafficking Specialist
Hi John,
It is so great to have your entry in the competition. It is clear that your program is having a lot of impact.
Could you please include more details in your delivery model section? Specifically, could you explain "How?"
How do you find the boys and how do you organize them to take part in the steps that you mention.
Lastly, Do you have any ideas for long term sustainability?
Thanks!
Dana Frasz
Ashoka's Changemakers
Dear Dana,
Thank you! I felt inspired despite the struggles we are regulalry confronting... it fuels our passion and determination.
Yup, the "how" is very important and there it is... That is "how we do it" in very simple terms.
For sustainability... this is a very challenging question and a task we mandate ourselves as well... Let me further elaborate our long-term sustainability through the hobby-that-earn component of the innovation: The artwork festival.
The artwork festival is a joint collaboration between our organization and our young Japanese Volunteers based in Japan. We are organizing the artwork festival and therapy sessions while they prepare the publishing, printing and marketing of the masterpieces in Japan. The concept both aims to address economic self-reliance and healing among our children whilst social awareness and mobilisation of resources are facilitated in Japan and in our local community by sharing stories through arts. This is part of our organizational Global Citizenry advocacy. Sometimes, when funds has been raised in Japan, I am invited to present the published artworks of children to Japanese youth and prospect buyers like during the 2005 Aichi World Exposition:
http://www.expo2005.or.jp/en/event/event03/0325/0eef3eadd4b3645849256fce...
We believe that through this artwork festival can sustain our innovation in a long-term basis and in fact can be replicated for our other projects for children/orphans/child labourers.
Our only constraints is that we need some trust fund to be rolled annually to sustain the annual artwork festival since we need some mobilisation of volunteers and community resources especially in gathering boys during their annual convention and fellowship. Maintaining volunteers needs hardwork to raise funds for their mobilisation for food and transport since we value their very efforts and time they spent for the success of our activites.
I will attach some photos of the artworks by this week.
Once again Unite for Children!
JohnPierre
Thank you for your comments that made me pondered
Our over-all goal programme goal (mission as you said) for this innovation is that boy-prostitution is recognized as a social justice and public health issue at par with girls and that impact of commercial sexual exploitation of boys has been addressed. We specially focus on boys because they are equally vulnerable in terms of commercial sexual exploitation but are underserved population in terms of prosecution, prevention and protection resources that address their victimisation. In fact, most of our children-victims of CSEC, only girl-children are being responded to by our numerous NGOs, government facilities and civil society organizations that offers wide array of services for girls. Sadly, we do not have any, not one for boys other than rehabilitative and corrective services in a prison/prison-like environment. The culprit of this as I mentioned is the double standard of morality in our society that expect boys to take responsibility of their own actions/experiences.
I also modified our title to encapsulate our objectives and are based on our five-step activites we regulary conduct distinctively for boys. However, I underlined in some part of my entry the double standard of morality since this culprit has generations to go before it will be changed.
I will discuss to you in my later responses our peer education systems already installed in our communties including information on the skills training we have designed or adopted through our partnership with academic and training institutions. I need to answer them comprehensively based on our expereince.
I would like to respond on community and religious partnerships:
For community partnership, we are proud that this is one of our strenghts. We organize a local BCC Team (Behavior Change Communications Team) composed of our project staff, peer educators, parents, local advocacy champions (legislator) and service providers (social welfare, rural health units, council for the protection of children) from the local governement. The team meet weekly during referrals and case management/monitoring of children (both boys and girls) for access to services.
As one of our organizational mandates to ensure community ownership, of course community and religious partnership is very crucial. I already discussed previously about the community BCC team and now I will discuss about "religious" parterships:
We also have spirituality component of the programme replacing “religious” partnership. Not that we are indifferent with “religion” but as far as our experience is concerned, religion has done more harm than good. We respect religious institutions as a unit of society that helps people cope their stress but there are some issues that sometimes we need to compromise such as condoms, harm reduction for injecting drugs, and prostitution which we already struggled so much that the Church has always been our formiddable critic. Our region where we operate stands one of the most powerful Archbishopric office in the country. Our spirituality component encompasses religion and we select progressive supporters from the religious sector rather than the institution itself. We have bible studies, special mass, and pastoral counselling conducted by pastors, priest, nuns. I will tell you one experience:
During our training with peer educators conducted in a neighboring island; we started with a Mass and before the Mass, there was a Confession. We were surprised when 80% of the children joined the confession. After the confession - the Preist called our attention and he was sweating. All of the confessions was all about their sexual expereinces. The priest wept and said: I congratulate you and as Priest, I never expereince the honesty of these boys and the shocking reality of their expereince and I provide you my blessings.
Jessica, I personally assure you that spirituality is part of our Human Capacity for Response and a key concept with very crucial importance
For changing social norms, it’s a long way to go, it is only through policy formation informed by local experience that would gradually change social norms by providing avenues for sustained community dialogue and policy advocacy.
Response for training, peer education systems tomorrow!
Mabuhay!
John
Dear John-
Thanks for sharing this inspiring project on changemakers. It surely sounds like you are a changemaker! i was hoping you could interpret this sentence for us in how you will help other young men (and women) share in the transformational journey you made:
From victims to survivors, from survivors to advocates, from advocates to nation-builders and finally enduring every adversity in life to become Global Citizens – our changemaker’s pathway that facilitates change.
Can you give us an example of how your interventions help turn these young people into changemakers? i think it is very inspirational to understand what "theories of change" inform these projects.
Thanks for your thoughts, good luck with your further work!
All the best from Berlin
Heather Cameron
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Heather Cameron
Professor
Free University Berlin
University Challenge
Dear Professor Cameron,
How is Berlin?, when I visited Belgium a year ago to visit the sponsors of our children and update them, I have the chance to visit a part of Germany. I felt bad when I heard the news that there are many Filipinos who attended the World Youth Day and did not came back here and stayed there illegally.
Anyway, I wish to discuss about the transformational journey you want me to expound more. But I do not have the luxury of time since this "chain" as you call it and "spheres" as I see it is actually part of our organizational mission and this was part of my discovery and learning on my own life pieces and I want to talk about it very seriously.
You said about "theories of change" and this also inspired us since we ourselves are not very aware that many transformations in my life, lives of our communities and our organization's work has "theories" attached with them.
Although there is diversity in this world, I believe that there is a special pathway for change for each humans to reach a common destiny (of Humanity) – a peaceful and sustainable world.
Once I have engaged in an e-forum when I said “We should remember that people without peace in their hearts are determined to destroy the peace of many” and I encountered a response “Yes, that’s true, but usually people not having peace in their heart are not born like that. So we have to treat cause first and then only the effect”
There is a grain of truth in his reply but to reckon on my own experience, we cannot justify our victimization or to use our past to continue the cycle of violence. On the first place all humans are victims and the first victimization is the day they were born. We did not choose to be born but are born in this very hostile world and its our responsibility to define our purpose and to choose the way we want to exist and live life.
It was during my discovery that my first sexual experience was a sexual abuse experience - the moment that totally wrecked my life. During the time of resistance, violence started and my life is hell! Until I ran away home. In the streets I found friends and I discovered that I was not alone and there I found friends with worst experiences than me. I become engaged with their illegal activities and became a leader capable of organizing them. We are noisy, we blame our parents, the Government, God, Church, and people even our own selves. All moments are anger, hatred and violence. No moments about our dreams, aspirations and hopes and always end in jail or in the company of those taking advantage of us.
One day, I started talking about my dream and they shun away and said that what is important now is to survive and no time for our dreams. But I insisted in sharing them my dreams and I want to know their dreams. They do not have dreams! Or maybe they are ashamed to tell about their great dreams because they felt they are not entitled of dreaming. However, my childhood dreams keeps bothering me-a promise I made to my self that someday I will be a scientist to find cure for AIDS.
I began to realize that it was my past that keeps me back from moving forward and that is what happening with street children. They are prisoners of their own war and what interesting is that within that prison cell together with them is the key to open the gates.
For me that situation is the sphere of victimization and it was during my attempt to step out of that sphere and observed street children that made me see what’s inside and there is truly noise and there is are common understanding shared and that is hatred, anger, violence, revenge and survival that left them no windows of hope and enlightenment (2bcontinued)
Hi John,
this sounds like a great project.
Can you tell us a little more about the “Double Standards of Morality” exacerbated by machismo and marianism culture engrained in the Filipino psyche" you were writing about? I am wondering how this connects to boy prostitution. Also, if gender roles and gender relations in Filipino society seem to play into this, are you addressing gender issues in the wider community at all in your work - by campaigning for a different understanding or dealing with the boy´s indivudal perception of gender?
Looking forward to your answers,
Jasper
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Jasper Nicolaisen
Free University Berlin
University Challenge
Hi Jasper,
Thank you for your inquiry regarding this topic.
By the way, Machismo is what I connect to boy-prostittution while Marinaism is girl-prostitution.
I will just give you some insights about machismo and marianism – actually this is my bias (please correct me if my observation is pointless, for me to understand more on the dynamics of exploitation, slavery and trafficking). I personally believe that these two perpetuate the prostitution of both males and female children. HOW?
For Marianism:
I have interviewed many prostituted women (in the course of my social work), and almost all of them have one common denominator - experience of rape, incest and sexual abuse. I kept on pondering, researching, and analysing why they became prostitutes just because of that adversity and I cannot understand until I studied many literatures including the Holy Scriptures. And in my search for answers, I have one suspicion that religious education (as interpreted and taught by Men) “might” indirectly lead these women to prostitution. Another common denominator: these women felt they are “garbage” they are dirty women because they lost their virginity and they must atone for that loss. Clearly being taught in schools and churches that sex outside marriage is a sinful act and a mortal sin. Without interventions they ran away home and group themselves to other women with the same plight (sphere of victimisation). When I read the scriptures I see the two faces of Mary, the Ever Virgin and the Prostitute.
Personally, I feel there is a strong link (despite I do not have an empirical bases) between prostitution and how Scriptures has been handed down to us by Male writers/interpreters that perpetuate Women’s inferior role in society. That’s why, in our counselling and transformative interventions, we strive to level-up aspirations of girls and women who transcended abuse to always remind themselves – virgin or not, I am Human and I have Dignity and I deserve to respect myself and to be respected and achieve my childhood dreams.
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