There are Roughly 2,000,000 Orphaned and Abandoned Children in the Philippines – Why? (Part 3)
The Philippines’ Department of Education, Culture and Sports’ mission is to provide quality basic education that is equitably accessible to all….” And yet, CNN Philippines reported not too long ago that six in ten families in 2016 and five in ten families in 2017 lacked access to basic education. Not exactly equitably accessible, although, it has dropped from 60% to 50%, which is great progress. I couldn’t find any more current information so let’s assume it is getting better and better, but the gap is still pretty large. Why is this?
Education is for many an escape route away from poverty. In the Philippines, however, this clearly isn’t the case.
There is a huge disparity among different social groups in educational achievement, as there would be in most countries. This is not at all unusual. The wealthy have better access to education than the poor, plain and simple. The wealthy’s kids will get the higher education needed to prepare them for the kind of careers or entrepreneurship that will get them ahead in life. Is there anything wrong with this? Not at all – but many will cry “Unfair!” – but truly little about life is fair to begin with. It is a simple fact that even in wealthier nations, those who can afford it will send their children to a good school to get educated. We should not fault them as all of us would do the same for our children if we could.
Let’s do the math….
Since around 25% of the population live below the poverty line, many Filipinos, while being literate, find it hard to get ahead in life. More than one hundred million people live in the Philippines, so 100,000,000 x .25 = 25,000,000. That’s a lot of people living below the poverty line and since it costs money to send your child to school (supplies, clothing, food) those kids are forced to find something else to do besides going to school…like begging, scavenging, and even working for hire to help their families.
Now what?
In the United States there is a pizza place called Chuck E Cheese and their slogan is, “Where a Kid Can Be a Kid!” Unfortunately for the millions of kids left out of the school system in the Philippines, they do not have much chance of enjoying their childhood, maybe even their whole life. In the meantime, we will continue to build orphanages for these precious kids and provide them with food, clothing, clean water, education, and healthcare. And we invite you to join us in this fight.
