Thursday, March 4, 2010

Yesterday I asked Elena (coordinator of IJM-SSO) if there were any places to buy souvenirs, or if any of our clients sold anything like jewelry for their livelihood. She basically told me all people do here is fish in order to sustain themselves.

We went to the office early in the morning to have breakfast, more crab, rice and shrimp, oh and mango….which I’ve been having for every meal since I mentioned to Joyce and Josie that it was my favorite food here so far. I met a women working in the office who is a mother of 2 of IJM’s clients. Her daughters were trafficked when they were 13 and 16 I believe. A friend had told them she wanted to take them on vacation to Manila, so when they got to Manila, a friend of the friend then trafficked the girls into the sex trade. When the mother found out her children had left to go to Manila, she scrounged up the money to go to Manila and look for them. I was shocked she did this considering how big Manila is, and how many possible bars they could have been in. The mother wandered the streets, and saw one of her daughters walking down the street in only a few days. I started crying hearing this story, and realizing the love this mother had for her children to wander the streets of Manila looking for her children. It was a picture of God and how he cares and chases after his children. Elena told me this mother makes homemade peanut butter and sells it for her livelihood…so we bought all she had. 16 bottles of peanut butter haha…and its sooooooo good.

This day of training was by far one of the greatest days of my life. If the only reason I came to Manila was for this training, then it would all be worth it. I finished teaching all the components, and had them break into groups to role play each component (allowing them to speak their own language). They were amazing. They had captured every detail I thought could maybe be lost in translation. While I couldn’t specifically understand what they were saying, I knew they got it. I stood up after they were all over to just share how amazed I was and started crying into the microphone haha. A woman raised her hand and said while I had given them the gift of all this information, that their role plays were their gift to me….showing me they got it.

During a break, I stopped at the table where the heads of each department sat. I asked them if they felt they could use the leftover art supplies I had brought for the training and one of them started crying saying they had nothing like this in their office. At that point I wished I had brought more.

We did a graduation ceremony, and let some of the heads of departments speak about their experience. One woman said that she had been to a lot of trainings, but none that gave them so many resources. She said she didn’t understand why an NGO would want to help them so bad, and that IJM has been the only NGO that has really been able to do that. She said she was so grateful for having discovered IJM and couldn’t wait to get back and utilize what they had learned. Another woman got up saying that while all three organizations there were very poor, that hers was the poorest, and that when I had given them art supplies, the leaders of the other departments decided to give her a majority of the supplies (amidst their lack of supplies, as well). She started crying saying how amazing it was to have these things, but she knows now that she doesn’t need these supplies to be good counselors, that she has herself and her talent in order to go help people. She got so fired up that afterwards everyone joked that they should vote for her for president. It was amazing for me to witness these social workers feeling so empowered and so refreshed to go out and do good work for the clients in their area. Joyce then got up and said she would make sure to bring supplies for them next time she came. Incredible.