Video Credit: ACSPPA/AMLC
The word “anak” means child in many Malayo-Polynesian languages, including that of my country the Philippines. It has also been used for the title of a Filipino song and movie, giving it the depth this word deserves.
The title of this post is “Anak”, because one must be the child of a parent to exist. We all have this in common.
And street children have parents, which is specifically the topic of my post.
In relation to that, I was able to watch in high school the documentary Minsan Lang Sila Bata (Children Only Once) twice, which is about child labor/exploitation in the Philippines. As sad as this reality is in the world, I wasn’t moved to do anything about it at the time I first watched the documentary.
But when I got accepted into my school’s Peer Counseling Organization, I was given an opportunity along with fellow members, to work with street children.
As I wrote in my post Extra-Curricular, our project was to host a “Day of Fun” for the street children of Kuya Drop-In Center, wherein they could use the pool, play basketball, volleyball and other fun games with us at our school. During one of our games, two kids started hugging my legs for some reason. I don’t usually experience that kind of affection from people, not even from my family.
How is it that children who had nothing could be giggling, smiling, having fun and showing affection?
I don’t even feel like I did anything for them. They were the ones who gave something. They taught me about humanity and how society should be.
That day was the reason I chose to study social issues.
It is because of that day that I desire the “happiness of society”.
Now, all of us members of human society come from our parents, and our parents from our grandparents, and so on. But logically, there would have to be a first parent. Who is this first parent?
We would all then have originated from this first parent.
We all come from the same source.
How should we treat one another?
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