DOLE-7 launches Angel Tree project for working children

The Department of Labor and Employment in Central Visayas recently launched the “Angel Tree for Child Laborers” project to raise funds for the basic needs of working children.

The project, launched during the weekly Kapihan sa PIA-7 the other day, coincided with the celebration of the National Children’s Month, observed every October, which carried the theme “Bright Child: Karapatan Nasa ‘yo, Isigaw sa Buong Mundo.”

DOLE-7 regional director Elias Cayanong said the Angel Tree project is carried out nationwide and, here in the region, it is being done by appealing to kind-hearted people to share, in kind or in cash, whatever they could offer for immediate needs of working children.

Cayanong said their primary objective of the government in this project is to involve the community in spending for the welfare of the working children, the number of which according to the DOLE-7 registry now reaches 26,800.

The DOLE’s role here is to broker between the child laborers who are officially recorded in the database and the donors who want to share anything to these working children.

Cayanong said a trust account will be set up, for financial donations, which will be transparent for accounting purposes.

The project launching was punctuated with a ceremonial gift-giving of 30 school bags by Cayanong to lawyer Nina Valenzona, executive director of the Share-A-Child Movement Inc.

Share-A-Child Movement is a non-government organization that provides educational assistance to working children. It also has 250 scholar-beneficiaries in the elementary, high school and college levels.

The 30 school bags that the group is set to receive would in turn be distributed to the working children of barangay Babag, a mountain barangay in Cebu City where many juveniles work in the vegetable and cutflower industries.

Valenzona said his group has been working with over 900 child laborers in Babag who incidentally have been exposed to sharp instruments during harvesting, and to hazardous chemicals from pesticides used in maintaining the plantation.

A Singaporean Youth Group that has been a partner of Share-A-Child, meanwhile, is slated to arrive this November to donate also school bags and school shoes to the working children of Babag. – Gregg M. Rubio/RAE