Helping kids turn from crime to crafts

At first glance they seem like ordinary youngsters working on crafts projects — rolling old newspapers and magazines to make into vases, handbags and tissue holders, sewing stuffed toys, cutting Styrofoam to make colorful signs, pouring liquid wax into candle molds — but these minors (ages 15 to 17  years old) are not regular teenagers whose main concerns are homework and crushes. They are juvenile offenders accused of crimes ranging from stealing to assault, rape and murder. 

This is their home while their criminal cases are ongoing in court: the Molave Youth Home, a two-story building at the Quezon City Hall complex.

It is easy to forget that they are detained here because there are no guards with guns.  The only reminders that they are is the fact that they can’t step outside the hall and that the stairs leading to the second-floor dormitory can be accessed only through a steel-bar gate, guarded by men in short-sleeved linen barong. And, if not for the fact that their toothpaste is rationed because the social workers found out that some kids got high by inhaling toothpaste, none of them look like they were on drugs prior to their detention here. 

Their main figures of authority are the social workers of the Social Services Development Department of Quezon City; they give structure to their lives — largely a life of rules and routines — which teaches them discipline and responsibility.

The kids wake up at 6 a.m. to do their toiletries and prayers, a roll call follows and at 7 they exercise on the open rooftop where they also hold classes during the day, then they have breakfast, followed by cleaning of their dormitory. From 9 to 11 a.m. they have their morning classes. Then lunch followed by  afternoon siesta. They also work on their crafts or train for cosmetology and other technical skills. 

They rotate on house duties with some of them assigned to the kitchen or cleaning the bathrooms. A nutritionist oversees their meal programs and they follow a weekly menu. On the day we were there, they had fried hotdogs for breakfast, putong puti for their morning snack, laing with dried daing for lunch, boiled saba for their afternoon snack, and fish escabeche for dinner.  

Family visits are limited to two hours on weekdays and four hours on weekends and holidays. When they have a court hearing, security escorts them and the social workers assist them.

Quezon City Councilor Bernadette Herrera-Dy, head of Bagong Henerasyon (BH) Foundation, is one of the supporters of Molave Youth Hall. She helps by finding sponsors for the raw materials they need, raising awareness and inviting people and organizations to buy what the kids produce.

Since its inception in 2001, the foundation has trained thousands of underprivileged individuals in skills programs such as Computer School on Wheels (COW), APEC Digital Opportunity Center (ADOC) and eCare Center. Bernadette’s other projects are micro-financing for housewives; the Alternative Learning System (ALS) for high school undergraduates; mobile clinic; and skillista, an online job placement program.

A third-term councilor of the first district of QC, she uses her network to help sell the crafts produced at Molave in bazaars and other venues with the money going directly to the kids who made them. “Some NGOs and religious groups also come here to visit and they take an interest in the products,” she says.

Not all the minors at Molave are from Quezon City, but the crimes they are accused of occurred in Quezon City. They are here under the commitment of the court and because they have no money to post bail.  Of the 120 current residents of Molave (with only seven being girls), “most of them are from Quezon City’s poorest district, the second district, which includes Novaliches, Fairview, Payatas, Commonwealth, Batasan and Balara.”

Ma. Teresa M. Mariano, who heads the Social Services Development Department of Quezon City, says that while poverty is a big factor in negatively influencing the minors into a life of crime, it is not the only reason they are here. “Basically it’s misguided values,” she says. “The family is the foundation and when that basic unit is shattered, it can be disastrous for the child. They see their father high on drugs or alcohol, they know of someone who rapes and gets away with it” so they have no moral compass. 

At Molave they have eight social workers and house parents, plus training officers from the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) and teachers from the Department of  Education to look up to. Of course, there are also residents who rebel against the rules and against their group leaders. For this they lose their privileges, such as TV time. Fighting between the boys also happens but not very often. The kids receive individual and group counseling to foster a “therapeutic community.”

Mariano confides that there are rare cases when a resident has already graduated from Molave and once outside deliberately commits a crime to go back in because he has nowhere else to go, no family to go back to.

Then there are those who come back with grateful hearts and donate whatever things the kids need to make their crafts.

At Molave, the cycle of crime is replaced by a cycle of gratitude. 

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For inquiries on the products produced by the minors at Molave Youth Home, call Ma. Teresa M. Mariano at 927-1588, 924-1440.