Rural orphanage focuses on permanent homes for kids
By Called and Sent Staff
2-1/2-year-old Kathleen bites into a tasty snack at the Bahay Kalinga orphanage. Bahay Kalinga has Kathleen and her brother, Ishmael, until their home situation improves.
SO WHAT NOW?
1. E-mail PMA at info@pmapacific.org to inquire how you can assist Bahay Kalinga with its budget needs.
2. Pray that Bahay Kalinga will soon get the staff it needs to supervise its children and run daily operations better.
3. Visit the PMA home page at pmapacific.org to find out more about the mission and their projects.
NAUJAN, MINDORO, Philippines—Most people would consider the Bahay Kalinga Orphanage small.
With space for just 12 children, Bahay Kalinga (House of Care) can get full fast. It fills up faster when the federal Department of Social Welfare and Development sends kids from larger cities such as Manila to ease overcrowding at orphanages there.
Space would be more of an issue if the point were to house the children until they came of age. But here, the idea is to take in an orphaned or abandoned child, process his documents as quickly as possible and match him with a good family looking to adopt.
The strategy has worked well. In the 15 years since Pacific Missionary Aviation [link] founded Bahay Kalinga, it has placed 126 children in permanent homes, mainly in Europe and the U.S. The process usually takes about a year, says social worker Angie Dioquino, who spends about half of her time flying to do adoption paperwork with the Intercountry Adoption Board (ICAB) in Manila, 145 km (90 miles) away.
“Processing the papers is the biggest challenges, going back and forth [to Manila],” Angie says. “Transportation is quite expensive.”
So is staying in Manila for a week or two or four with babies in tow. But Bahay Kalinga has never viewed itself as a permanent home for the children it cares for. So getting them through the DSWD system takes priority, even if it takes Angie away from her supervisory and record-keeping duties back on Mindoro.
“We have a different vision than some …” says PMA missionary Mary Cleope.
“… to find homes for them,” adds Melinda Espinosa, PMA’s chief financial officer. “They’re abandoned, abused, given up due to poverty — we just want to take care of them while we have them and hopefully bring them up in the Lord and get them good Christian homes.”
Some children at the orphanage still have parents but can’t possibly stay at home. One 2½-year-old girl, Kathleen, and her 18-month-old brother, Ishmael, stayed at Bahay Kalinga because their father was in prison and their mother was too ill to care for them. In those cases, Bahay Kalinga is home unless their parents legally abandon them by signing away their rights.
Angie is anxious for the mother to do just that, but she’s more anxious about getting more help at the orphanage. Though several volunteer caregivers feed the babies and change diapers, Angie needs staff to supervise the children full-time and record events such as kids’ developmental milestones and parental visits. Attracting people to Mindoro, a mostly rural island known mainly for its vast rice paddies, has been difficult.
One bit of encouragement: A Filipino couple applied recently to be full-time house parents. Other help is needed, though, including an assistant social worker who can keep accurate day-to-day records of the kids’ progress while Angie is away.
PMA also needs additional funding for general expenses—food, medicine and schooling among them. From the adoption fee of about $10,000 USD, the orphanage gets a mandatory $500 cut—but that’s usually all. “It’s just to compensate for the time spent caring for the kids,” PMA missionary pilot Malcolm Cleope says.
All the more incentive to stick with the orphanage’s core focus of caring for them just long enough to get them into a better permanent home.
“The orphanage may only be able to hold 12, but we move them,” Melinda says. “We don’t keep them.”
