Why are you here?

Why are you here? This question was asked to me and my cohort by my sector Manager during one of our first sessions.  He wanted to know both why we chose Peace Corps service and also why we wanted to serve in the Philippines. He said that our reason for choosing to serve would motivate us to stay when the days got difficult and we wanted to go home.

 **October 8th, 2012**

Wow I have been here in the Philippines for 3 months now.  It feels surreal still but the training in Subic has properly prepared me for my stay here.  And over the past 24 hours my “WHY” for staying here in the Philippines has changed.  My “WHY” for coming was to be a blessing to someone else as I have been blessed in my life. That is the “WHY” that got me here in the Philippines. While that is noble and has its good intentions that rationale will not keep me here in the Philippines as I have realized that I can do similar work at home with my own African-American people who experience hardships everyday that affect their daily functioning.  After reasoning with myself on this conflict of serving abroad I realized what I could not before put into words but carried in my heart.  This trip and “WHY” is more of a social justice issue as well as a Human right issue.  While African-Americans still continue to suffer social and economic injustices, there are laws that exist to help protect them as well as other vulnerable populations.  In America we (both the oppressed and advocates for the oppressed) are conscious that these things exist and actively work to fight these injustices Here in the Philippines it is a different story.  The biggest noticeable difference between poverty in America and poverty in the Philippines is that in America everyone "has", it’s just a matter of how much an individual "has" which differs from one to another.  In the Philippines there are those who have and those who don't have anything; and the two live right beside one another.  The wealth dis-proportionality in this county is daunting.  In America it is thought that there is a relationship between education and poverty; the more education an individual has the less likely he or she will live in poverty as more opportunities will be available.  It seems that this premise is true also here in the Philippines.  

            As I have had more time with my clients I have in fact become an advocate alongside the social workers and staff here at the agency.  The infants, toddlers, children, girls and women that we serve deserve the right to equal access to resources such as resources, education, income, and protection from harm in cases of sexual assault and neglect/abuse and exploitation, human trafficking and slave labor.  The children should have access to clean and safe shelter, loving families and a nurturing environments to thrive.  The women have a right to be treated humanely and not be used as a sexual outlet but instead be told that they have worth as human beings and that we respect their dignity.  The women have a right not to be sexually abused while serving as a housemaid then subjected to degrading interrogation to discredit their accounts of being raped.  The children deserve so much more than to be on the streets begging for money or selling plastic bags.  They deserve more than to be abandoned and renamed “Baby boy X”.  Socially I have a responsibility to impart my knowledge and wisdom as a social worker.  This “WHY” will keep me here and this is my justification for staying in a developing country for two years.  Certainly I cannot change these systems as a foreigner in this country over the next two years, but I can make a difference in the lives of the clients I see on a daily basis. That is why.