I stayed at Bahay pag-asa for only two weeks. While this stay was too short I enjoyed it and am planning a trip back again this year. The boys were very respectful and friendly; they were always keen to lend a hand or try to teach me some local customs and language.

I was moved to see how hard they strived to better themselves and get on with the future. I hope they all do well in the future and hope to return to Negros Occidental very soon.

- Daniel Thomson
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When I first met the boys at Bahay pag-asa, later on in the evening after a short but disorienting drive from the airport, there were many things that concerned me. I had no grasp of Tagalog or Elonga, had barely traveled outside Australia, was experiencing considerable jetlag and was coming to grips with the fact that, for the first time, I would be away from my family and friends for Christmas. Before meeting the boys, I had no idea of what to expect; these were, after all, boys that had committed serious crimes. What I found was a group of boys sitting in a room, quietly, intent on watching a game of basketball. Politely, they asked me and my friend to join them, and so we sat and watched. Occasionally they would shyly ask a question, the chief among these being: “Why have you come to the Philippines, Kuya?”

I wasn’t sure how to answer.

The residents of Bahay pag-asa were bright, welcoming, resilient young men who, for one reason or another, had found themselves on the wrong side of the law. As a high school teacher who deals largely with middle-class males, I was amazed at the resourcefulness and work ethic of the boys at the centre. Bahay pag-asa offered the boys a sense of hope for reform that they might rarely find elsewhere- certainly not in adult prison- and were surrounded by hard working support staff, prefects, volunteers and guards who treated them with respect and dignity. Here I found a community of people working to better the society in which they lived. I was honored to be invited to be a part of this, albeit for only two weeks.

I have returned to Australia with a very different perspective on things, not least of all my job as an educator. My stay at Bagay Pag-asa enabled me to discover, or perhaps even re-discover, that there is an inherit good that exists in all people, irrespective of the mistakes they have made. The welcoming nature and good humour of those experiencing considerable hardship has reminded me that people, and their welfare, should be at the centre of everything we do. I hope that the boys we spent our Christmas with can go on to share what they learn at the centre, and realise that they too have to power to instill hope in those who need it.

 -Sam Carroll

Sam Caroll and Daniel Thomson, both from Australia, spent two week in Bahay Pag-asa last December 2010. They spent Christmas in the Center with the residents.

I’m married now.  My wife’s name is Nichole.  She’s half Filipino actually.  I’m doing a Ph.D. at George Washington University in DC.  I’m doing research in topological graph theory (mathematics), and my wife teaches at an elementary school in NW DC.  I’m going to be finishing in a couple of years, and we’ll be planning on starting a family shortly after, if my wife and I don’t find ourselves expecting before that.

I found out about the program when Br. Glenn asked me if I’d be interested in going before I started grad school.  I decided I wanted to take him up on his subsequent offer shortly after he gave it.

My impressions when I got to the center were that it was a delicate balance between a jail and a school.  There was a definite effort to make it a serene place.  Yet, it was definitely a place where those on the inside were supposed to be staying inside.  My impressions of the P.I. and Bacolod were that it was hot, muggy, and with a very happy population, despite being in some of the worst widespread poverty I’ve seen.  One thing that stands out in my memory is how happy everyone seemed to be despite not having nearly the creature comforts that I had in the United States.  The country was the first place I’ve been in that was overtly Christian.  The people seemed to adapt to a schedule that had them rising and falling with the sun.  I’m guessing that it had something to do with the heat, or the lack of electricity in certain areas, or both.  Perhaps this was just in Negros, I can’t remember totally.

I also remember how nicely I was treated.  I remember that Filipino hospitality was not unlike Italian hospitality. Everyone seemed happy to see me.  They were all very kind and generous.  The people at the center were very kind and supportive of what I was trying to do.  The seemed to go out of their way to make me feel like I was a part of the family there.  They were quite successful at that.  I was an energetic, but unseasoned teacher.  It was the first class I’d had all to myself.  I think that they knew that.

After leaving the center, I feel like I know more about how to reach disadvantaged students than a great many of the people that I’ve taught with.  As a teacher, I have benefitted from this experience in manifold ways.  My students get someone who feels a duty to his students.  I also never complain about serving on a jury, nor about a Common Law legal system.  Most days, I remember to pray the rosary, and I remember to pray for the Brothers, their causes, their students, their benefactors, their vocations, especially Pag-Asa, SMC, and the Leo Center.

Steve came to the Philippines with Br. Dan Fenton (his story here).
He made hope happen. You can too.
Get in touch with us: 034-4539545 | br.arian@delasalle.ph | www.facebook.com/bahaypagasa

“This week in Bahay Pag Asa was kind of extraordinary; for their last week of their stay the novices organized a sports festival. In four groups the boys were competing in several disciplines such as basketball, volleyball, ping-pong and… chess!

It was nice to see how the boys participated in really different ways: some were very serious and wanted to win, others just wanted to enjoy and have some fun during the competition. The nicest thing for me was when I asked one boy after he lost the final if he feels bad or disappointed. His reply was simple and honest: “I don’t feel disappointed. It’s part of the game to lose. You cannot win all the time. But you can try to do your best. It’s the same for your life.”

This statement made me really happy and showed me that he understood something very important. Referring to him I hope that the sports festival was not only amusement for the boys but also a kind of education.

All in all everybody enjoyed this week a lot. Too bad that it’s already over…”

Tilman is a volunteer from Germany. Read about him in this post. We will be posting more of his reflections in the coming weeks. 

If you want to work in a house called hope, please get in touch with us:
034-4539545 | br.arian@delasalle.ph | www.facebook.com/bahaypagasa

“The highlight for me this week was the outreach with the staff and the novices to the mountain resort Mambukal. It was a nice experience to meet the people you are working with in a relaxed environment.

With my students in high-school we were continuing our work on linear equations. I was positively surprised how fast they were able to understand and to solve the problems. I expected it to be much more difficult. Let’s see how much of it they will remember next week…”

Tilman is a volunteer from Germany. Read about him in the post. We will be posting more of his reflections in the coming weeks.

If you want to work in a house called hope, please get in touch with us:
034-4539545 | br.arian@delasalle.ph | www.facebook.com/bahaypagasa

Even through his darkest days, Juan described his experience in Bahay Pag-asa as one of the best ones he wouldn’t forget. This place gave him a home, gave him hope. It taught him how to look at the brighter side of life even when everything’s not going his way and when everything is falling apart. Through Bahay Pag-asa, he took hold of his faith. He saw himself believing in God more than he thought he ever could. This home taught him how to hear mass not just for the sake it but to fervently pray everyday that he’s given a chance, to mean every word in every prayer. Juan was given a chance to develop his talent in music. He was able to enhance his skills in playing the guitar and drums.

This experience is the most life-changing for him. He can face the mirror and see a different person. A better person who can face reality and take things the way it is, and to just be thankful for each day that you are given a second chance.

In Bahay Pag-asa, he found a home, he found hope.

Profile by Isabel Monasterio

The kingdom of heaven may be likened to a man who sowed good seed in his field. While everyone was asleep his enemy came and sowed weeds all through the wheat, and then went off. When the crop grew and bore fruit, the weeds appeared as well . . .. His slaves said to him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’ He replied, ‘No, if you pull up the weeds you might uproot the wheat along with them. Let them grow together until harvest; then at harvest time I will say to the harvesters, “First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles for burning; but gather the wheat into my barn.” Matt 13:24-30

Not wheat, but rice to be planted in the fields at Bahay Pag-asa

For the past seven years, I have accompanied young volunteers for a month-long service trip to the Philippines, to Bahay Pag-asa Youth Center, Bacolod, on the Island of Negros. Each year I warn the few volunteers that travel with me, “You’re not going to be tourists. For the most part you’ll be spending all of your time working with teen-aged boys who are in trouble with the law. You will get up at 5:30 in the morning and you’ll be exhausted by 9:30 in the evening. It will be hot and humid. There will be mosquitoes, flies, ants, spiders, lizards, snakes, and frogs. The power will go out regularly and there will be no hot showers. You will probably see things that upset you and you won’t be able to do much about it. Your job will be to support the staff as they work with the residents and you’ll need to follow the rules they set down.” Strangely, there are always a few who still want to go.

Bahay Pag-asa or “House of Hope” is a center for Filipino youth who have run into trouble with the law; it provides a safe, positive, educational environment as an alternative to the overburdened Philippine correctional system which has often housed young offenders with adults. The center opened in 2001 with the support of the District of San Francisco and under the supervision of Christian Brothers of the University of St. La Salle in Bacolod.

The volunteers are always full of questions: “What are the kids like? Do they speak English? What did they do to be sent there?”

I think back over the stories told to me. “There are some who are falsely accused. Most of them have been involved in some sort of illegal activity. Some are facing murder charges.” When the volunteers finally have a chance to meet the residents, they invariably discover that “They’re just kids! They’re polite. They’re interested in learning.” They can’t believe that these nice boys came out of jails or police lock-ups.

Every summer, I can count on Jensan Lazarito, the social worker who has dedicated her life to helping the boys at Bahay Pag-asa, to fill us in. Soft-spoken and unassuming, Jensan has walked me through jails and squatter camps in search of potential residents and to find the families of current residents. She guides my understanding of the legal processes and can describe the facts of particular cases: “Stealing chickens and ducks…attempted rape…homicide…highway robbery…breaking into a house.” Later the volunteers will say to me, astonished, “They’re charged with some pretty serious stuff!” Jensan also reviews the background information on each resident, “…father told the boy to steal food…was beaten with a bamboo stick…was a street kid…parents abandoned him…was recruited into a gang…father is in prison…has a psychological disorder…was defending this father who was being attacked.” I glance at the volunteers. They’re looking at the table, the floor. They’re thinking of their own experiences of growing up, silently comparing.

Over the years, the Brothers, the staff and the boys have filled me in on the details of arrest and incarceration. The jail stories, from many different boys and in many different cities, are strikingly similar. Unless a boy has connections (a relative or friend at the jail), he will fall prey to abuse from inmates and guards. Several years ago CNN broadcast shocking images of children stuffed into cages in one particular jail. UNICEF launched an effort to reform the country’s juvenile justice guidelines, and in 2005, a Juvenile Justice Reform Act was passed. Under its provisions, no child under the age of 15 may be held by police for more than eight hours and are exempt from criminal liability. Juvenile offenders between the ages of 15 and 18 who are charged with serious crimes are to be placed in intervention programs.

Following the passage of this reform, there was significant confusion regarding its implementation. The government scrambled to set up centers specifically for minor offenders, but there were soon reports that the same kinds of abuse found in the jails were taking place in these centers. I visited a government-sponsored “Social Development Center” with Br. Vince Fernandez, where there was a mixture of minor offenders and abandoned children. The conditions looked little better than a jail. No learning activities were taking place and the kids were sitting on a concrete floor, their arms and legs covered in rashes and sores. Brother Vince explained, “It is up to us to demonstrate how to run a real rehabilitation program.”

Once the young men complete their terms of rehabilitation, they face another problem: Where do they go after this? The desperate and hopeless situations in their homes have, in all likelihood, not changed during their incarceration. In answer to that concern, Bahay Pag-asa Halfway House on the campus of St. Joseph’s High School in Bacolod was established. Originally envisioned by Brother Gus Boquer, opened by Brother Vince Fernandez and now supervised by Brother Arian Lopez, it is a place where former residents of the Bahay Pag-asa Youth Center can request to join a community of students once their court cases have been resolved. There, they spend their morning hours operating a water purification and bottling business, and in the afternoon and evenings they attend classes at St. Joseph’s High School. Currently, two former Bahay Pag-asa residents are attending the University of Saint La Salle while living at the Halfway House.

By the time the volunteers have been working at Bahay Pag-asa for two weeks, they have a more accurate sense of the realities faced by the residents. Some are very intelligent and, with dedication, effort and support, could become college students. Others have serious learning disabilities or a lack of schooling that makes language-related skills difficult. There are options for kids like these, especially in the areas of agriculture and mechanics. Bahay Pag-asa’s livelihood programs provide a great deal of practical farming experience and volunteer teachers have helped the residents become skilled at food preparation, water purification and recycling. The residents raise livestock and sell meat and eggs.

Over the years, I have brought some unusual “gifts” to Bahay Pag-asa that reflect my interests as a science teacher. In 2004, we installed a weather station which is still working. In other years, I have brought telescopes, microscopes, and materials for all sorts of science activities. Early on, Brother James Joost provided computers, while more recently students at De La Salle North Catholic High School in Portland, Oregon (who purchased the first weather station and telescope) sent books. The students at San Miguel High School in Tucson continued that practice, sending microscopes, books, science equipment and money for scholarships. Students at Cathedral High School in Los Angeles teamed up with the San Miguel students this year to raise $1500 in assistance for the expenses of the Halfway House residents who are attending college.

Inevitably, the volunteers notice that there are desperately poor kids wherever we travel in the Philippines, an observation corroborated by a recent newspaper article suggesting that 50% of the half-million residents of Bacolod are squatters, living in unhealthy and unsafe conditions, conditions that lead young people into drug addiction and criminal activity. The efforts of Bahay Pag-asa may seem inadequate in light of these realities. Brother Gus Boquer, the visionary who launched the first Bahay Pag-asa, has a simple answer – build more centers for youth in conflict with the law. The second Bahay Pag-asa located in Cavite, south of Manila and adjacent to De La Salle University, Dasmariñas, has been completed and will soon be ready for residents. Among other innovations, this facility will operate in conjunction with the Criminology program at the university and will offer training for police officers in the implementation of upgraded guidelines set forth in the Juvenile Justice Reform Act. A third Bahay Pag-asa is planned for the island of Mindanao. The ultimate hope is that these centers will become models for the rehabilitation of juvenile offenders and will be replicated throughout the Philippines.

After four weeks at Bahay Pag-asa, Bacolod, the volunteers become adjusted to the schedule of prayer, teaching, manual labor and recreation; they also become, predictably, very attached to the residents. The volunteers have been teaching and learning simultaneously. They have been side-by-side with the residents in the classroom, at the table, on the basketball court, and in the chapel. They have gone to hearings and visited homes with dirt floors and no running water. They have joined the residents in planting rice, cassava and sweet potato. They have enjoyed the unexpected and unsurpassed hospitality of people who were strangers to them just a few weeks ago. These volunteers have been moved to the depths of their being, by an experience that was complex and unpredictable. They reexamine the world they inhabit and it no longer makes sense in the way it used to. They look at their faith and ask the tough questions.

“It’s not fair.” I knew this was coming; it always does. “I have the things that I have because I was born in a certain place. If I had been born here, in the conditions that these kids were born, I would be in the same situation as they are. Why does God let kids suffer like these kids have?”

I tell them what little I know. “You’re right, of course. The world is not fair or even reasonably humane, but our hope for the perfect world should not make us think that God botched the imperfect world we have. In fact, it’s a very good thing that we don’t live in a perfect world. We would be terribly out of place. Look at these boys you have been working with. They are sons of God but they are not perfect, and neither are we. We all are a strange mysterious mixture of weeds and wheat – just like these boys. You love them not because they are perfect, but because they aren’t. It’s why God loves you and gives you a world so imperfect that it is open to change. You can make change happen and you can create better possibilities for yourself and for these guys whom you now love. The imperfection and unfairness of this world is God’s gift to you. It means you have a vocation and you’re just starting to discover what it is.”

The volunteers always smile, appreciative that I have tried, but they are going to have to sort this out for themselves. My synthesis probably falters in the light of careful reasoning. Waiting in the Manila Airport for the boarding of our long flight home, I ask them to write down some of their thoughts or impressions. Reading them later always helps me to understand why doing this is all so very important and why we are so very lucky to be here.

“I am a different person after this trip. I was humbled, I was loved, and I was educated. My heart is troubled when I compare my “hardships” with theirs.. . . There’s something powerful about receiving gifts from people who have nothing material to give. –Adonis Trujillo 2010

Bahay Pag-asa is in great need of donations to support their educational endowment and operational costs. These can be sent to Br. Arian Lopez, FSC, c/o University of St. La Salle, La Salle Avenue, Bacolod City, 6100, Philippines.

Donations may also be made through the De La Salle Institute, District of San Francisco.

Fortunately, I was blessed to join Br. Dan last summer on one of his trips to the Philippines. It was my first trip overseas. We had three other volunteers with us as well. I was nervous but at the same time very excited. I was even forced to learn many things about the Philippines such as the name of the island we were going to,  the time difference between there and the United States, how to keep in touch with family at home, and what the living conditions are like in the Philippines. I say the word “forced” because my mom would not have allowed me to go without providing these answers for her.

Upon arrival in the Philippines, we were greeted by humidity that made the most uncomfortable day in Tucson look pathetic by comparison. After we settled into the place at which we were staying, we finally got to meet the boys that we were going to be helping out. Coming from the outside looking in, it felt like a dream to realize I was in the same country as the people we were raising money for and sending packages to. Honestly, that amazing feeling never let up, it felt like dream for the entire six weeks that we were there. We taught these kids, went to their court hearings, met some of their family, ate the same food, worked the same fields, prayed the same prayers, and lived with them. There were no technological distractions, a perfect time to reflect and get to know other people really well. The boys and the faculty at the center became like family to us, just as they become like family to one another. We spent our nights gazing at the stars (which are different down there) and studying homework. I can go on and on about the all the productive time I spent there but this letter is to state that I plan to return to the Philippines again this summer.

I thought I understood the depth of the situation when I was there, but I still think there is a lot more to be learned. I initially went there thinking that I would be the one changing lives, but it was certainly my life that was changed. I found that without a doubt the things that “Club Pag-asa” (at San Miguel High School) does for these kids affects them and makes them proud to know they have friends in America. They save all the letters and pictures they receive from us, holding them with hope, and hoping to receive another. I want to act on this sense they have of hope, and their hopes of seeing me again. I made a promise to them, that I would see them again and I plan to uphold that promise.

-Adonis T. Trujillo