Children In The Philippines

The Philippines is known for its pristine beaches and warm hospitality. More than 175 different languages are spoken throughout its 7,500 plus tropical islands. However, the global Filipino neighbors face high rates of natural disasters, extreme poverty, and child exploitation.

Poverty affects every area of a child’s life. Poverty opens the door to violent crime, drug trafficking, substance abuse, and hopelessness. There are more than 40 million children living in the Philippines with a total population of over 110 million people and counting. 12.5 million of those children, or about one in three, live in poverty. Poverty means that many Filipino children don’t get enough nutritious food, to the extent that one in three has experienced stunting and close to one in five are underweight because of malnutrition. A report done in 2018 found that more than 2.8 million Filipino children of school age lack access to education, with indigenous children and children with a disability, greatly affected.

A natural disaster is a humanitarian concern for children in poverty, especially with most of the country’s population living in coastal areas affected by great flooding due to typhoons and other natural storms. Frequent exposure to extreme weather events adversely affects children both physically and emotionally. Natural disasters can push children into poverty and prevent them from escaping it.

Poverty also exposes children to higher rates of abuse. More than 80 percent of Filipino children have experienced some sort of violence, including physical, psychological, sexual, or online abuse. The online sexual exploitation of children (OSEC) is an extremely serious problem in the Philippines, to the extent, it has been labeled a global ‘hotspot’ for these types of crimes. Lewd acts against children are streamed online for money. On the other side of the call are pedophiles, often based in higher-income countries such as the United States, Canada, or even Australia.

Many Filipino children and families have been confined to their homes without food or income during the pandemic. This difficult reality has been one of the reasons for the increased abuse of children for money. Widespread international cash transfers, cheap technology access, also make internet-based criminal activities convenient. Many times it’s the parents, relatives, or friends that introduce their children to online predators so they can have monies to buy food and other expense of the home. About 41 percent of the time, the parents are involved.”

Let us continue to pray not just only for the Philippines but other countries around the world because of the ongoing problems that impoverished countries faced, especially when there are children involved. Give The Love started when Mary Ann and I were riding around on our motorbike and turn off on a hardly traveled road only to discover so many makeshift homes and children outside playing in the road with dirty clothing, no shoes, and not welled cared for. Each day after what we saw I begin to pray at the kitchen table during lunch and dinner for these families. One day I was praying and it came to me what was I going to do about it. Wow! me, I thought, I didn’t have much but we begin to tell others back home in the United States and immediately a handful of people said that they would help us. And no the rest is history, the birth of Give The Love begins with us giving each family 5 kilos of rice.

Rice is the popular stipend food here in the Philippines and they can eat it 3 times a day because of the ability to feed families at a low cost. A meal is not complete unless there is rice at the table and many families were not able to afford a cup of rice. Some parents go out and pick up cans, and other items to sell just to get the rice on the table. We yet being new to this but God has truly blessed many families since the start of the outreach. Over 800 families have been blessed through Give The Love International and we would like to say thanks so much for your support. God bless you all and continue to keep us in your prayers.

Give The Love (Philippines)

Percy & MaryAnn Lacsina Craine

support@givethelove.org