Small wins

Over in downtown Cebu, tucked away amongst decaying concrete commercial establishments and sidewalks with sleeping cots, a place of laughter and play hides.

Children run around amongst ladders and a sandpit, are given colorful plastic clips to construct necklace chains, and supplied with picture books that identify the zebras and ostriches that they will probably never see in their adult lives. At a certain point, the designated social worker will hum a song, and that is the signal for the kids to start tucking away their toys, and move on to the next activity.

Perhaps, it will be mealtime, when the kids are given nutritional snacks like rice porridge. Perhaps, the next phase is bathroom time, when they line up to use the toilet. Or, it might be playground time, when the necessary space denied them at home is suddenly available, there to be roamed or climbed, and certainly enjoyed.

The children come from nearby depressed areas. The shanties or sidewalks. Depressed areas where parents cannot afford childcare, and need to report for their jobs or make a living in the makeshift economy. They are of pre-school age, too young to report to the mandatory public schools, and yet, too big to be hoisted around by mom. Rather than be left at “home” with little (or no) responsible adults around, the children are entrusted to the care of a foundation that has been around for more than 20 years: Little Bamboo.

It’s not a school, but certainly, many valuable things are taught. There is hygiene, like washing the hands, and there is structure, gleaned from a predictable schedule. The kids are also dewormed, something that parents might not be too savvy about. Perhaps, the children also encounter warmth and compassion from the adults around them, something they seem to yearn for as they clamor for attention from the visitors, delighted to show off their prowess at games and picture books.

Little Bamboo has survived through the years from the generosity and largesse of many private individuals. Volunteers and donors spare what they can, and it is a testament to the vision (and persistence) of its founder that Little Bamboo is still there, serving the function of what textbook economists call this country’s population dividend.

So much cheap labor. The more poor people that are born, the more to export as maids and seamen. The more voters to woo with ?500.

Yet, it is also an indictment of this country, of this ill-managed self-ruled nation, that Little Bamboo still exists. That its reason for being, its raison d’etre, hasn’t disappeared. That the poor who live in those communities are still poor, and not just that they have remained poor, but their numbers have even increased.

The squalor remains, the shanties multiply, and the failures of government become even more pronounced. But who cares, really.

The perfect outcome would be for Little Bamboo to fade away. To slowly disappear, there to remain a good memory for its beneficiaries, a happy chapter in its supporters’ lives, where they can think back and recall those times when they did some good. There would be moments of celebrations for success stories, such as when those children would receive scholarships 15 years hence, or even more fantastic, when they would land jobs. Any job. Perhaps, even in a call center! Gasp.

But there would be no more needs for urgent funding calls, or to deal with the need for accreditation with inefficient government agencies, or convincing staff who live hours away to keep on reporting for duty. There would be no need to prepare small meals hoping it would sustain the kid until the next, or making do with limited cash.

More than 20 years from its founding, Little Bamboo has only grown. That is a success for Little Bamboo. But a massive failure for us.

Who to blame? Where do the fingers point? To the local executives, who have lorded it over from distinguished grandparents to incompetent scions and on to their nepo-babies? The massive corruption that has drained away trillions in resources, precious pesos that could have been used to house them, educate them, and wean them away from these squatter colonies?

But we point fingers and we make loud accusations, and yet, still nothing. Where will these communities be a decade hence? What will happen to them? Will the slums just get bigger? And where will Little Bamboo be?

Today, we celebrate small wins. We celebrate making a child giggle. We celebrate the donated slippers in different colors that demarcate kids in one classroom from the others. We rejoice in teaching numbers, colors, shapes, and songs.

We focus on celebrating, because not to do so would let the bad guys win.