Day care centers and backyard gardens

In reaction to Sunday’s column on “Batang hamog and other children in the city,” Elon Sison, the indefatigable 90-plus-year-old mother-in-law of my cousin Ruben Pascual (his wife is Mayang Sison-Pascual), writes of her continuing concern about early childhood education for children of the urban poor.

“Yes, there are Barangay Day Care Centers mandated by an executive order (which requires) at least one (day care center) in each barangay where 3-6-year-olds are brought for a few hours under the care of day care workers while their mothers do some work. But how many such centers are there?” Lola Elon asks.

In Quezon City, where she resides and where she has long been an advocate for children and (many) other causes, Lola Elon reports that before former Mayor Sonny Belmonte was elected to the House of Representatives (subsequently becoming the Speaker), the local government funded 257 day care centers, with many of the city’s 140 barangays having more than one.

In 2005, Mayor Belmonte even allotted P800,000 for a workshop for day care workers (who are mostly volunteers), that was conducted by a professional early childhood education group (headed by Sr. Harriet Hormillosa) and the federation of homeowners associations (the AQCHAI). There were 257 participants who took part in a values-oriented workshop during the summer break. And from the participants themselves, says Lola Elon, “we learned how unprepared (they) were to handle properly these very impressionable and vulnerable children from poor families.” As a result, she adds, “Mayor Sonny signed a MOA with Miriam College (bless them) to give Saturday classes (to) groups of 100 (children) at a time. This (went on) until the 257 received their Teacher’s Certificates.”

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Under the new Quezon City administration, though, reports Lola Elon, the same group’s offer to give a Refresher Seminar on Early Childhood Development for the day care workers was refused by the head of the Q.C. Social Welfare Department, Ma. Teresa Mariano.

“A pity because our main seminar conductor would have been our very own Ma. Teresa Fabros Calderon, a Maryknoller who was recently awarded (as) ‘Champion for Children’ by the New York State Education Board for her expertise in Early Childhood Development,” writes Lola Elon. Miriam College had also offered free use of their auditorium, with Metrobank Foundation as a co-sponsor.

It’s indeed a puzzle why such an offer, which would have entailed minimal cost on the part of the city government and which would have enhanced the skills of day care workers looking after the children of the poorest communities, was refused.

I do remember that early in the life of our women’s group Pilipina, day care with an enhanced early childhood development program was one of our first advocacies. We realized then and still recognize now how mothers needed time for themselves to earn and organize; young children needed the chance to learn basic skills and socialize; and society needed to support the parents’ work of raising the next generation.

If every child had the chance to go to a day care center and thus stand a good chance of going on to elementary and high school, would we be facing the “epidemic” of “batang hamog” today? As Unicef says, society must make a deliberate decision to put equity at the heart of urban planning, and children on top of the list of officials’ priorities.

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On another front in the battle against poverty in the city, a battle being fought with poor children on the front lines, the recent National Nutrition and Food Security Forum urges communities to utilize their own backyards and idle lands to help end child hunger malnutrition.

Hygea Ceres Gawe of the National Nutrition Council (NNC) reveals that 66.9 percent – or more than half—of Filipino households consume inadequate diets while 72.7 percent—the majority of households—are worried about sufficiency of food because they do not have money to buy food.

“Filipinos need to be self-sufficient especially in staple foods,” says Gawe, to make Filipinos less dependent on imported staples (like rice) which are becoming more expensive.

Forum organizer “Save the Children” offered hope with a “proven and tested” model that helped reduce hunger and improved the nutritional status of children in pilot areas.

The program, called “Making Food Go Further,” taught families to turn their household areas into “backyard gardens” using recycled materials. Over 1,500 families from Parañaque City, Lake Sebu (South Cotabato) and San Remigio (Antique), set up household gardens, and with support from Kraft Foods Philippines, managed to decrease the people’s self-rated hunger from 47.6 percent to 36.7 percent.

“We hope that the results of the project in our project sites, especially Parañaque City, a highly urbanized area where malnutrition is the sixth highest cause of death among children under 5 years old, will be replicated in other cities and municipalities. From 15.6 percent, the number of underweight children ages 0 to 59 months has been reduced to 13.0 percent. It is our duty to help every child attain their right to be healthy and well-nourished,” said Norma Pongan, Luzon Visayas Program Manager of Save the Children.

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Meanwhile, the Department of Agriculture also shared their urban gardening program which proved that households in urban areas with limited space can grow vegetables sufficiently in cans and plastic containers.

Poverty may hold back children in the cities from reaching their full potential, but families can do what they can—from converting open spaces into gardens and vegetable plots, to supporting the right of children to early childhood education.