LOGARTA
In “Takna sa Kababayen-an,” the Legal Alternatives for Women Center, Inc. weekly radio program aired by dyLA, Atty. Noemi Truya-Abarintos of Children’s Legal Bureau announced that Children’s Month had been launched that Saturday with a caravan parade with government agencies, Department of Social Welfare and Development, Department of the Interior and Local Government and others, as well as nongovernment organizations.
From October, the celebration has been moved to November; Atty. Noemi found this fitting for it was in the month of the November that the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child emerged.
She said the focus of the celebration would be the rights of the child. She asserted the importance of these rights to be known and respected; for instance a very basic right is the right to a name. How lost a human being would feel and be if she is nameless.
It is timely to reflect on the concerns of the youth. When I asked the students to do some fact-finding on the challenges, I was quite shaken to be reminded that a major problem is neglect and abandonment.
This leads to many other problems such as street children, dropping out from school, children in conflict with the law, teenage pregnancy, child abuse and exploitation. A quick look at prisons would reveal more males than females are in them. More males drop out from school than females.
So have we designed schools to be more appealing for girls than boys? Boys are allowed to stay away from home earlier than girls, so they easily go into informal jobs.
It has also been pointed out that while girls are exposed to more role models, boys have less opportunities to learn what it means to be male because of the absentee father phenomenon.
Instead, boys learn about being male from the barkada, or now from a whole variety of media forms. Young people have an unspoken thirst to be informed about handling relationships. So at times they resort to pornography. Unfortunately, doing this habitually would actually prevent them from developing authentic satisfying relationships.
Government and nongovernment organizations have been fighting cyberpornography.
A lot of our problems rise from the way we view our children. Often we treat them as objects or property. Fathers who engage in incest have no qualms about these because of the thought that the children belong to them.
All sorts of rationalizations have been used to justify the sexual exploitation of children. What is happening in our culture? Why are we behaving and thus teaching our children that taking shortcuts is acceptable? Is it very difficult to show them that “easy does not do it”? Have we forgotten how very precious our children are?
Kahlil Gibran reminds us that the children are not our own. Atty. Antonio Oposa treasured them enough to fight a legal battle to ensure that they will continue to benefit and enjoy our natural treasures.
Jesus proclaimed how very dear to Him and His Father the little ones, whose angels were in contact with the Father have always been. One hundred years ago in Fatima, Our Lady partnered with the children in the work of salvation and bringing about world peace.
This weekend, we will be reminded of these events in the drama production, The Children and Our Lady of Fatima. Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Parish and St. Theresa’s Alumni Association (STAA) have been working together for the presentation on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday at the STC Auditorium.
After a great deal of devoted research, Delia Aliño-Villacastin wrote the live script. She is the play’s artistic director with the assistance of her daughter Mary Rose Villacastin-Maghuyop. Niño Bañares is musical director while Roberto Bargamento is dance director. The lead producers are Bishop Dennis Villarojo of the Archdiocese of Cebu and Jasmine Pages of the STAA.
Disclaimer: The comments uploaded on this site do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of management and owner of Cebudailynews. We reserve the right to exclude comments that we deem to be inconsistent with our editorial standards.
