Saving street kids

Most of us see children roaming the streets and do nothing. A few, like Dara Mae Tuazon, take action.

Tuazon first realized she needed to do something when, at the age of 11, her eyes were opened.

“When I saw kids in the street with nothing to do, I knew that I would become an educator; I needed to act,” she said.

As reported by the Inquirer’s Matthew Reysio-Cruz, she photocopied old coloring books, collected pens, pencils and crayons at her home in San Fernando, Pampanga, and then called the street children for an art lesson.

That was the beginning of a continuing passion. Tuazon took up education at the University of the East in Manila and quickly applied what she was learning.

Then still a freshman, she chose an area near her school’s gate on Gastambide and gathered three street children from the area to teach them shapes and numbers.

Less than a year later, UE took note of her initiative and allowed her to use one of its classrooms for her teaching. In time, she was teaching impoverished kids aged 3 to 14 in “classes” held from Monday to Friday.

Tuazon and UE eventually joined forces to start Bangketa UEskwela; the university provided her with a desk, chair, materials and equipment such as a laptop and a projector.

“As the project went on, many people started volunteering, so we decided to turn it into a foundation,” Tuazon said.

Thus was born Bangketa Eskwela Inc. (BEI), headed by the then 19-year-old Tuazon. BEI has grown to hold classes in various Manila barangays for more than 100 out-of-school youths.

This young woman’s dedication has been recognized by The One Philippines (TOP) Humanitarian Award, a subsidiary of The One International Humanitarian Award founded by Hong Kong businessman David Harilela in 2017.

Tuazon was given a P1.5 million cash grant for BEI.

When she received the TOP award at the Marriott Hotel, the guests present pitched in an additional P250,000 for the foundation.

She will represent the Philippines at The One International Humanitarian Award in Hong Kong; if she wins, her foundation can receive a larger cash grant of P5 million ($100,000).

Tuazon’s achievements echo that of another Filipino educational volunteer: Efren Peñaflorida sought to serve children in the streets and slums through his “Kariton Klasrum” program and his Dynamic Teen Company (DTC).

Named CNN Hero of the Year in 2009, Peñaflorida continues his advocacy today, with the DTC helping everyone from very young street children to college scholars.

“Learning is not confined inside the classrooms. We want [the students] to be empowered by one another, and build a culture of building each other up instead of pulling [another person] down,” he said last year.

Children in the streets instead of in schools make up a growing problem in the Philippines. In 2012, Unicef reported that 1.7 million children in 570,000 households lived in slums.

“Excluding these children in slums not only robs them of the chance to reach their full potential; it robs their societies of the economic benefits of having a well-educated, healthy urban population,” then Unicef executive director Anthony Lake said.

In 2015, a report by a group of Philippine nongovernment organizations estimated that there were as many as 30,000 children in the streets of Metro Manila.

These are the many young lives that appear headed down the drain. They are the ones who can yet be “saved” by people like Tuazon and Peñaflorida.

In a 2015 article, University of the Philippines professor emeritus Edita Abella Tan wrote about the value of students staying in school: “The completion rate in the elementary level was only 75 percent, meaning that about 25 percent of the children drop out before completing the grades. The large proportion of young children (about 25 percent) who do not complete the elementary grades is forever barred from pursuing high school and college, and those who do not enroll in high school lose the opportunity to pursue college education.”

The efforts of Tuazon and other people who nurse a dream are important because they exemplify what volunteers outside of the government can do (BEI is now planning branches beyond Metro Manila).

The private sector has a huge role to play in pulling street kids from the brink. To educate them is to empower them to ultimately break away from the impoverishment of body and mind.