In the bigger cities of the Philippines are a big amount of parentless children that is drifting around and makes their living as beggars. Those children end up often in bigger or smaller gangs whose is led by elder youth or an adult that abuse the children for their purposes.

In many cities there are different kinds of orphanages that are managed by different organisations and institutions which mission is to take care of those children in the very best way.

The co-operators that Filipino Tribe Mission Welfare have in the CARAGA region tells that this kind of structure not fits to this area for taking care of these children. Many homeless adults comes to the orphanage telling that they are the parent to this or that child, which means that the child is discharged from the home after a time of readjustment with its “parent”. The child is later abandoned by this adult and have then a problem to be accepted at the orphanage again as it is registered as “not parentless”.

Filipino Tribe Mission has developed another method that is during this moment under construction and that is based upon the traditional way that exists to take care of parentless children, it looks like this:

When children’s parents dies, divorce or abandon their children in a smaller village it is often the grandmother of the child that takes responsibility and care of the child. When it is a tradition in the Philippines that the mother cares about the children, it becomes also naturally that the mother of the child’s mother step in the roll as a mother if the mother of the child dies or abandon the child. Even when the parents divorce or the mother becomes left alone, the child’s mother moves into the house of her parents with her children. The grandfather mostly takes over the obligation of maintaining the children from the father too.

The consequences of this are that the parents loose their custody in the practical life. By law the parents still have the custody but it is very difficult to fight against the tradition of the people and the grandmother that have the right to decide for the best of the children’s future by it.

This is a tradition that originally came from the Catholic Church because it is forbidden to divorce due to its rules. The grandmother is in this case protecting her daughter from the shame by taking over the custody since she is still correctly married due to these rules.

If the parents eventually decease it is the Godparents that take custody of the child/children.

The consequences of this can be quite striking because there can be several Godfathers and Godmothers that together shall decide were/with whom the child/children will live and how the future shall be.

Childless couples or families who want to adopt a child can therefore make an agreement with the grandparents and/or the Godparents about the possibility to adopt a child.

This action is not working by natural reasons in the bigger cities where people and families come together from different places to find success. Children is borne and abandoned i.e. owing to prostitution, sickness, malformation etc. which creates a tangled heap of lost, hungry, uneducated people in the cities slum land.

In the Philippines, that has a tropic climate, many children and families live often here, there and everywhere in the city, under bridges, in crossings, often in or on a carton that they easy can lift aside during daytime.

Filipino Tribe Mission works on that, together with the police and social department in the Philippines, be admitted to register parentless and abandoned children in the cities and instead of an orphanage bring them to a Filipino home in the province in families who want another child and is willingly to maintain the child as their own, i.e. that the family gives food, pay for school and raise the child as its own.

In the case that a parent is missing its child, he is able to contact the social department that can through Filipino Tribe Mission show pictures and establish a contact with the child.

This to avoid those unserious poor adults shall try to live on these poor children.

This work is to a part self financing since the foster family take the obligation to maintain the child during its growth. Cost that Filipino Tribe Mission has affects from transportation and costs in connection with visiting work, establishment and follow-up. We need your support.