Precious Women

Jun. 30, 2008 Newsletter by Tara C. Alverson

‘Precious Women’ is one of the newest programs added<br />
to the International Care Ministries in Dumaguete City, Negros<br />
Oriental . It’s designed to reach out to those women in the surrounding<br />
community who have been subjected into prostitution.<br />
ICM has been running this program in other areas around the<br />
Philippines since it’s induction over 15 years ago. Once a week<br />
they hold a bible study and give out 4 kg of rice to each recipient<br />
of Precious Women.<br />
Sol, the staff member in charge of the Precious Women’s<br />
program goes out and visits with each woman regularly. 27<br />
women in prostitution have joined the outreach program. After<br />
one year the women will be assessed and if they choose they<br />
can apply for the micro-loan program through the ICM. It’s<br />
designed to help the women who want out of prostitution find an<br />
alternative livelihood. The ICM will fund any necessary training<br />
and education for them to succeed. Every year the ministry<br />
goes out and finds a new group of 25 women in each area for the<br />
outreach. ‘It’s a blessing to have 27 women, but the ICM unfortunately<br />
only has funding for 25 in each area.’ Sol informed me<br />
of the problem that she was facing with the new ministry she<br />
had helped start. She asked me, ‘How do I turn the two women<br />
away?’<br />
Each week 4 kg of rice is distributed to each precious<br />
women’s recipient. 4 kg of rice cost roughly 158 pesos ($3.75<br />
US). This is meant to last the recipient and their small family<br />
for a week of meals. One month for one recipient cost 632<br />
pesos ($15.00 US). One year, 7,584 pesos ($180.00 US). The<br />
supplement feeding helps the woman and their families with a<br />
small part of the cost of living. It’s a simple way to encourage<br />
and allow them to look elsewhere for a source of livelihood. If<br />
you would like to donate to this cause you can either go to the<br />
ICM website and make your donation specific to the Dumaguete<br />
ICM, Precious Women’s Program, at www.caremin.com, or you<br />
can contact me via email and I can provide you the information<br />
necessary.<br />
My family has donated toys and children’s clothing<br />
which has been distributed at the precious women’s program.<br />
Any type of support means so much. One of the women is not<br />
yet 30 and just gave birth to her 8th child a few days ago. She<br />
informed Sol that she started prostitution when she was 14<br />
years old. It seems so young but most women are introduced<br />
into prostitution at a very young age. The woman’s oldest<br />
daughter who is 13 has also begun prostituting herself. Nearly<br />
all the women subjected to prostitution come from very poor<br />
families, broken homes, and for one reason or another they<br />
were not able to attend public school. The government requires<br />
that all children be able to read and write before they are accepted<br />
into public schools, but if the family is poor and uneducated<br />
they may not have the time nor the resources to help their<br />
children. Some of the young women already have sick parents<br />
to take care of and younger siblings that are in their debt. Going<br />
into prostitution is often a choice that a young woman makes<br />
not for her own benefit, but for her family, and for her children’s<br />
welfare. Sol tells me that most of the women she talked<br />
to were neglected and sexually abused by family members<br />
when they were very young.<br />
Sex tourism is a huge part of the economy in the Philippines.<br />
You don’t have to walk down the streets very far to see<br />
it. I was in Manila a few weeks ago and I talked to a man in the<br />
hotel lobby where I was staying. He was from Arkansas, maybe<br />
35. (We’ll call him John) John told me he was waiting for a<br />
girl, who was a prostitute. He alike many of the foriegners that<br />
come to the Philippines for the sex tourism travel to the different<br />
islands. ‘I guess I’m kind of wandering around, trying to<br />
find why I’m alive.’ He actually sad that, and I asked him why<br />
he came to Manila to find out why he was alive, he laughed.<br />
‘Some of the guys I travel with are really abusive to the girls,<br />
...they yell at them, push them around.’ Most the women in<br />
prostitution are treated as if they have no human rights, slapped<br />
around, beaten, raped and forced into other extreme acts of violence.<br />
It’s sick, but that’s how it works in the bigger cities like<br />
Manila. The economy here is dependant on sex tourism. It’s<br />
illegal, make no mistake. But the government turns a blind eye,<br />
just as long as they and their officials get paid off, all is favorable.<br />
It’s monstrous how corrupt the Philippines Government is,<br />
especially when it comes to the rights of it’s own people.

I helped the ICM survey the women in prostitution from<br />
around Dumaguete City. The first question was, ‘What is your<br />
occupation?’ I got flustered, thinking can I ask one of the girls<br />
that? But all the ladies answered, ‘waitress’, which confused me.<br />
I later found out from Sol that most the women work as waitresses<br />
in the bars around town that support the act of prostitution.<br />
The bar manager is the one who sets up the ‘date’ and is paid a<br />
flat some, usually about 500 pesos ($10 US). The woman who<br />
is referred to as the prostitute gets only 20% of that, being 100<br />
pesos (A little over 2 bucks). Talk about a crime! If a woman has<br />
three children to feed at home she would need to have at least<br />
two or three customers a night to be able to feed and support her<br />
family for one day. I can’t imagine the physical and emotional<br />
warfare it must conflict on a persons psyche.<br />
Poverty and lack of education is a real problem to the<br />
physical and mental health of people living in poor communities.<br />
Here, poverty is the real reason why women go into prostitution,<br />
whether lead by their family or themselves to make money.<br />
It must be hard to subject yourself to that kind of degradation<br />
everyday. That kind of humiliation seems to have taken a tole on<br />
the women. You can see it especially on the faces of the older<br />
generations who lived an entire life of prostitution. One woman I<br />
talked to in the Cebu Center had been beaten and raped repeatedly<br />
by her ‘customers’, forcing her to do things no woman should<br />
ever have to suffer. And most the women have mixed feelings<br />
about foreigner’s that come for the sex tourism. Sure they have<br />
more money but often times they are the ones that are most abusive.<br />
In my Lonely Plant, Philippines guide book the authors<br />
talks about the sex tourism, putting the number of sex workers<br />
in the Philippines up to 400,000 in 2006, and over 20% of that<br />
number being children. Pedophilia sex tourism is a reality here in<br />
the Philippines. It happens. ‘There’s big money to be made in pedophilia,<br />
...Despite strict laws, the number of foreigners charged<br />
and convicted for child sex crimes in the Philippines is so low as<br />
to be an encouragement to foreign pedophiles.’ - Lonely Planet,<br />
Philippines. I’ve seen some of the older men staring at the young<br />
girls, I’ve been right their when they go up and start talking to<br />
them. I hate the idea that I can’t do anything, but there’s a hot<br />
line called, End Child Prostitution in Asia Tourism, www.ecpat.<br />
net. I’ve visited it a few times.<br />
It’s horrible to think of children being the crime of such<br />
a hennas act. And no one says a thing against it. A sense of false<br />
pride, or a sense of what is called ‘Hiya ‘ in the Philippines prevents<br />
the people from speaking out. I think also they are afraid.<br />
Not many Filipino’s have a reason to trust their government to<br />
uphold justice, and those that have spoken out against such corruption<br />
have been made martyrs.<br />
Sex tourism is destructive at every level. From the<br />
women subjected into prostitution to their children, all the way<br />
up to the government. I don’t see the global problem of sex<br />
tourism going away anytime soon. Not with pedophiles and sex<br />
addicts fleeing to other 3rd world countries to find cheap ways<br />
of pleasuring themselves. Honestly, it pisses me off! Where are<br />
detectives, Benson and Stabler when you need them most?<br />
Despite the madness, the ICM continues to reach out on<br />
a local level to each recipient. I think it’s the practical manner<br />
of how they go about it that really makes a difference. Maybe<br />
only 5 or 7 of the 25 women in the program decide to find<br />
alternate livelihoods. But what a positive impact that has on<br />
those women and their families. This program means something<br />
to the community. The 27 women in the Precious Women’s<br />
Program here in Dumaguete tell me that just by coming<br />
once a week on Fridays, at 3:30pm for the bible study, encouragement,<br />
and rice. I think Sol is doing a great job reaching out<br />
to the women in the community.<br />
- - - - - - - - - -<br />
We are going to take the orphan’s dolphin watching<br />
in the coming week, depending on weather. They are very<br />
excited. Lot Lot, the young girl with cerebral palsy says she’s<br />
excited, but tells me, ‘I like snakes more then dolphins.’<br />
I plan to travel to Manila in the next week or so to pick<br />
up my camera in the repair shop. I might go further north to<br />
Zambales (Near Mt. Pinatubo), where ICM has relations with a<br />
family that makes regular medical visits up the mountain to the<br />
remote tribal areas. It should be a good trip.<br />
I have bad news about little Blazela who lived on Paradise<br />
Island, Under The Bridge, of Cebu. She passed away last<br />
Monday, the 23rd of June. The complications from the hole in<br />
her heart were too much. She was 1 year old. The money you<br />
donated for her medicine kept her in the hospital more then 40<br />
days. I haven’t seen her family since. I’m sure they are struggling<br />
to cope with the loss. It’s tragic. I hope I can remember<br />
her as long as I can, she really made a difference in my life.<br />
You may have heard about the typhoon that passed<br />
over the Philippines last week, killing over 300 people, not<br />
including the 800 plus, still, ‘missing’ from the ship ‘Princess<br />
of the stars.’ It shouldn’t had left it’s port in Cebu, as half way<br />
through it’s journey to Manila it was capsized by the pounding<br />
waves of the storm. Unreported pesticides and chemicals carried<br />
in the cargo hold held back the rescue efforts. I wouldn’t<br />
be surprised if the government had something to do with it.<br />
The ferry boats here are really old and not always the most seaworthy.<br />
The typhoon left it’s wake. Their is still some flooding<br />
in some of the northwestern places in the Philippines, like<br />
Bacolod and Iliolo. Dumaguete was not hard hit at all.<br />
Earlier this month I helped design shirts, trophies and<br />
paint the backdrop for the ICM’s Grand Touch Point. It’s a performance<br />
and worship contest between the recipient churches<br />
for the entire Negros Oriental Province. The theme this year<br />
was ‘Lord of Blessings.’ It was fun. I hope you enjoy some<br />
pictures I have taken in the past months on Cebu, Bohol and<br />
Negros Oriental. I hope to have new ones for you when I get<br />
my camera back.<br />
I have three months to go. I’m still painting and planning<br />
on drinking a huge glass of whole milk when I get home<br />
and then taking a really long shower. Thanks again for the support.<br />
Pagpipinta Sa Pulo : Precious Women<br />
Tara C. Alverson / T.C. Artworks<br />
June 30, 2008

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pagpipinta sa pulo Newsletter © 2008 Tara C. Alverson. Reprinted with permission.