Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas Everyone

Chicken Ala Carte

This video was shown to me by one of the Vietnamese brothers who live here (hence why the link is in Vietnamese), it is a short film which was made in Manila in 2006. I think it is worth a watch.

This Year's Christmas Card

As many of you know Steph and I usually send out Christmas cards. This year unfortunately we won't be sending any cards, so please accept this picture and poem as our offering to you for Christmas 2011!

(Both were produced by Steph)

The gift of Christmas

As Christmas time approaches

And the cold, dark nights draw in

Curled up beside the flickering firelight

Watching snowflakes begin to fall

In a swirling of frosty blue

And dazzling white

Comes the warm golden glow

Of the gift of Christmas

The warmth of a fire of burning love

Of a comforting spirit of hope

Wonder and joyfulness

Warming hearts and souls

Cradled in a manger in a stable

Cradled in a heart full of love

Is the bright warm flame

Of the gift of Christmas

As Christmas time approaches

And the sun still beats down hard

Stretched out beneath the canopy of shadows

Watching palm trees rustle and wave

In a haze of dreamy yellow

And fiery red

Comes the cool silver light

Of the gift of Christmas

The freshness of a breath of inspiring change

Of an unsettling spirit of challenge

Newness and vitality

Refreshing hearts and souls

Cradled in a manger in a stable

Cradled in a heart full of energy

Is the cool refreshing breeze

Of the gift of Christmas

Misa de Gallo

 Literally ‘Masses of the Cockerel’ or ‘Dawn Masses’. There is a tradition here in the Philippines that during the nine days leading up to Christmas mass is celebrated every morning at dawn.

So both yesterday and today we have dragged ourselves from our beds and made our way to the church for a mass beginning at 4.30am.

On the first day we were expecting a half filled church populated by the ultra-faithful. We were wrong! Arriving at 4.20am the church was already packed to capacity, far fuller than for a Sunday mass, with only standing room available within the building. Outside there were half as many people again stood or sat on portable chairs. The attendance was truly impressive. All sections of society were present from new-born babies to the elderly, and unlike many European churches those in their teens and twenties were very much present.

These masses are a form of fasting. To attend them is to give up a usual activity in order to assert that following the way of God is more important. For nine days those who attend sacrifice a bit of sleep in order to make time to prayer more.

For me as a foreigner, these masses are testament to a better understanding of fasting than we sometimes have in our western churches. The masses are in no way woeful laments; rather they are celebrations of joy.  Sleep is sacrificed in favour of something better, a really life giving celebration. The pain of losing sleep is more than compensated for by the joy of celebrating God’s love.

We are only two day in but the sense of joy and positivity emanating from these masses has so far been worth a bit of lost sleep.    

How valuable is human life? How valuable is my life?

Living here at DBTC these are two questions which I find myself asking a lot.

Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and humanism all preach the equality of every human being. Every person is of equal and infinite value. According to these traditions the value of a human life cannot be attached to a person’s level of productivity or usefulness. We have a value greater than what we do. This is a tenet of belief in which most of us would assent to believe.

But living here in the Philippines the reality of inequality is powerfully evident to me every day. The Philippines is a deeply unequal society. The richest 10% earn more than twenty times more on average than the poorest 10%¹. The rich live like middle class Europeans or Americans whereas the poor live in slums without running water and without access to decent education or health care. Virtually every service here is privatised, state provided services are very sparse and of a very low quality. If you have money then all is well, if you don’t then life is very hard.

Already we have had a student drop out of his studies because his grandmother became ill, the families already stretched income couldn’t stretch far enough to pay for medicine, so he left his training in order to work and be able to buy the necessary medicine. It is possible that he will never get another chance to study.

Privatised health care means that the poor are thrown into poverty by illness and the destitute are simply left to die. Private education means that the wealthy get their children well educated and into well paid jobs while the children of the poor are taught in larger classes, and with fewer resources (sometimes without even paper and pens), so all but a few are destined to end up in poorly paid jobs.

Many of our students have to work in the evenings to earn money despite attending 11 hours of college every day. Lots of them try to eat only once in the day so as to save money.

Being here has made me appreciate the importance of public institutions like a good postal service, a good library service, clean water and reliable transport networks. Universal access to these things is a hallmark civilised society; in the Philippines they are available only to the wealthy.

To live in a land where one life is so obviously not of equal value to another is deeply unsettling. I don’t deceive myself into believing I come from a land where things are any more civilised. The globalisation of economics means that inequality is the responsibility of all of us; be it visible outside our front door or thousands of miles away.

Words about equality are very cheap! Sadly most of us live within the sphere of influence of an economic worldview which acts to commodify everything and everyone into a unit of production then hang a price tag on it. None of us are worth anymore than the value of our function. In a world where everyone and everything has its prices there are inevitably those not worth the spending money on to keep alive.

At the heart of all of this is a sickness of which it is hard to make sense. Dwelling too long on these questions forces me to question whether the world would really gives a damn about saving my life had I been born in a slum in a poorer part of the world. Confronted by the shocking negative answer to that question I become driven to try to earn the privileges acquired by an accident of birth. But this striving in turn leads to dead-ends; trying to earn our right to be considered valuable can only ever lead to dehumanisation and all too often it leads to mental illness.

But what alternatives do we have?

¹ http://www.newint.org/columns/country/2004/09/01/philippines/

A Day in the life of a TVED Student

This video, which was created by Steph, tells the story of an average day for a Technical Trainee.

A New Reading Site – Part 2: Reading the Bible

Continuing from the thoughts I shared two weeks ago this week I want to expand on that theme a little. Being aware of my own reading site is of paramount importance when living in a very different culture from my own.

One exercise I have found fascinating during my time here is to attempt to deconstruct my own reading of the bible. The bible is a very ancient text; it has continued to be read through thousands of different cultural, political, economic and religious worldviews. Through all of this history up to today people have found within these texts meaning and inspiration, but crucially they have found this meaning and inspiration in very different ways. Too often we assume that the truths we find (or don’t find) in these texts are those which were intended by the original authors and those understood by all peoples throughout the world and throughout history. I all too easily assume that my interpretation is ‘The Interpretation’.

One of the challenges of reading the bible here is to try to put to one side what seems to me to be the most obvious interpretation of the text and instead to try to see it, as best I can, through the eyes of the people here.  The reading site of the people here is, of course, much closer to the reading site of the first Palestinian Christians who actually wrote the New Testament. The Philippines is a country of vast inequality, it is dominated by powerful neighbours, and it is a country of visible religious fervour.

Take the example of Matthew 23:14-30, the text to which we give the subheading  ‘The Parable of the Talents’¹. This is a text which reads very differently when read from the different perspectives of the rich world and the poor world.

In the rich world we understand this parable in completely non-economic terms; the master is a benevolent God who demands that we make best use of our abilities. We with all our wealth and opportunity look at the text from the perspective of the servant given Ten Talents. This parable has influenced us so much that we have even come to call our abilities ‘talents’. So most often preaching on this text in the rich world will be about making the most of our abilities and not being like the bad servant with one talent who wasted what God had given him. His punishment at the end of the story is just desserts for his wasteful behaviour.

Try reading this text from the perspective of the poor man of the story, the man given only one Talent. This man, like many people here, maybe struggles to find enough money to survive, this man’s opportunities are maybe very limited, each day this man might run the risk of not being unable to feed his children. Such is the world in which many people here in Cebu live.

From the perspective of this man the actions of the master (in the parable) cannot be those of a benevolent God, they are the actions of an unmerciful master, they are the all too familiar actions of the rich and powerful over the daily lives of many people here who are made to suffer merely for being poor. Thus the parable is no longer a metaphor for the kingdom of God, but a symbolic narrative of their real world where the already rich get richer and the already poor are trodden on. The consequences handed out to the servant with one talent at the end of the parable are not the actions of God but the callous reaction of the rich towards those who are unable or unwilling to participate in the economic world of the rich. Take for example the many people here who suffer for lack of the medical resources which the richer world takes for granted, or those who suffer from a lack of access to the education that the richer world takes for granted, while at the same time the richer complain about (what they call) high taxes. Those in poverty are all too often blamed for being poor.

One biblical story, but two very different reading sites produce two very different interpretations. Neither is necessarily right or of more value. The challenge to all of us is not to believe that our own perspective is the only possible perspective.

(¹ I have borrowed, and adapted, the two reading perspectives of this text from the ‘The Biblical Vision of Sabbath Economics’ by the American theologian ‘Ched Myers’)

Images of November

Teaching

After two weeks of teaching the first conclusion I can definitely report is that teaching is Hardwork!

Steph and I are teaching English and Maths to the technical trainees. They spend most of their time learning practical skills but also have lessons in English, Maths, Entrepreneurship, Ethics, Theology and PE.  This education is alongside, daily mass, frequent prayers, practical chores and hobby time.

We are teaching all the English and Maths, and also writing programmes for both subjects which will be used by the teachers who follow us in years to come, not just here but also at the other Salesian Training Centres across the Southern Philippines.

Every week we each have 14 hours of teaching, 8 hours of assisting the others teaching, 1 hour of faculty meeting and a Marathon Saturday afternoon when we give extra classes to those who need them for as long as it takes, yesterday it took just over four hours. On top of that there is all the planning, marking and logging of results. I am sure the experienced teachers among my readers will think nothing of this relatively light workload. But for someone who has never taught before, and so is lacking confidence, it is pretty tiring.

We have 220 students, the biggest class is 37, the smallest is 23

Despite the tiring nature of the work I am enjoying the challenge. Teaching the intelligent students is relatively easy, it is the less able ones who present the challenge, but they also provide the biggest reward. There is definitely a certain thrill in helping an 18 year old to grasp simple addition.

This experience of being a teacher is itself teaching me a lot about the virtue of patience, teaching involves a continuous need to be patient. Understanding how concepts which I find easy can be difficult for another person does not come naturally. The temptation to get frustrated with their slowness to learn is an ever present.

This necessity, as a teacher, to try to see the subject through the eyes of the student is, once the frustration has past, a real gift.

Why didn't Noah Swat the Mosquito?

These are really annoying....

A New Reading Site – Part 1: Reading the Reality before my Senses

Whenever I encounter a new experience or encounter a new reality my brain quickly goes into overload trying to make sense of it. My brain does not sit easy in the midst of experiential chaos; I like to make order out of chaos at least to the satisfaction of own mind. I am pre-disposed towards finding conclusion to situations quickly. This tendency is not a bad thing, intelligence is there to be used, and yet at the same time it is an approach to new realities which is full of risk. I have to continually remind myself of the arrogance of a resident alien believing he can make logical sense of the Philippines within a few weeks or months.

So I have been getting very philosophical, thinking a lot about how I see the world, and how I make sense of the world. Here is where I am up to!

Whenever we encounter something new our pre-existing dispositions, ideas and prejudices weigh heavily on how we see, interpret and understand any information we receive. The way in which we make sense of the world depends very heavily on the place from which we view the realities in front of us; all of us have a particular location from which we read the world, our own personal ‘Reading Site’.

Take for example a written text, a novel, a sacred script or a newspaper article. The interpretation of this text often owes as much to the ‘reading site’ of the reader than it does to the intentions of the author. Two people can read the same text and yet construct a very different interpretation of it.

What goes for written texts in this example applies also to wider experience, to the sights we see with our eyes, to the discussions we have, to news media, to films, to liturgy, to art, to magazines and to music.

I as a Western European, so my first instinct is inevitably to make sense of The Philippines from my Western European ‘reading site’.  I have to be aware that this affects what I notice, what strikes me as important, what affects me emotionally, what makes sense and what doesn’t make sense.  I have to remember that ‘Objective Truth’ is always hidden behind a thick wall of ‘Subjective Truth’. As a human being I cannot stand outside the reality I have brought with me. (Incidentally I am very aware that these ideas about truth are in fact the result of my own very post-modern reading site!)

To believe we can read reality without a ‘Reading Site’ is to delude ourselves. However being conscious of my inherent prejudices and assumptions can allow me to be on alert to them. I can attempt to make judgements more slowly and listen to the world around me much more carefully than I normally would. The challenge while living here is not to make sense of the world here according to my own ideas and prejudices, that is easy. The real challenge is to deconstruct, and become aware of, my own ‘reading site’; and to attempt to understand how the ‘reading site’ of the people who live here is different.

What does reality look like for the very poorest people? Where are they seeing reality clearer than I am? And at the same time, what are their prejudices and pre-existing ideas that obscure their lenses?

What do I, as a wealthy European, look like through the eyes of a Philippino child living on the streets of Cebu? What do I, as a citizen of a seemingly secularising nation, look like through the eyes of a devoutly Catholic Philippino? Who am I from their reading site?

Pacquiao v Marquez

This morning we experienced another cultural phenomenon. Philippinos are not just devoted to Catholicism, they are also devoted to Manny Pacquiao!

Manny Pacquiao is the reigning World Welterweight Champion, and considered by many experts to be the best pound for pound boxer in the world. To the Philippinos he is much more than that, he is their only world class sports star and probably second only to 'Imelda' as the most famous living Philippino. The man himself is an unusual boxer, in interviews he is quite humble and complimentary towards his opponent, he prays in the ring before he fights, and when he isn't boxing he is an elected congressman in the national parliament.

We were woken by the sound of the sports coverage being played on loudspeakers. This was a full five hours before the fight actually started. Most Philippinos can't afford the pay-per-view cost of seeing the fight in their home. So neighbourhoods will club together and split the cost. The fight was as much a social occasion as a sporting event. Early masses were packed with people who would normally go later, even the homily was about Pacquiao.

At 1.00pm everything in the Philippines stopped and they collective paid homage to their hero.

As it happened the fight was much closer than we had been lead to believe it would be. At the end most of our fellow watchers seemed to think that the Mexican Marquez had won, but not according to the judges. Pacquiao edged it on a split decision.

As you can imagine they are all very happy!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/boxing/15710641.stm 

Praying for Peace

Here in the Philippines today is a national day of prayer for peace. We, along with the whole school, stopped lessons at 11.00am to pray the rosary for peace. It was not just a two minute pause, everyone stopped for twenty minutes of prayer.

11^th November has no historical significance for the Philippines. The First World War was a very European war fought a long way away. The Second World War was, of course, very different. The Philippines lost 800’000 lives, of which 750’000 were civilians.

Today (11^th November) is not a day on which soldiers are honoured or remembered, it is simply a day of marking the cost of war, of mourning, and of longing for peace.

This of course contrasts with the UK. Over recent years (in the UK) the 11^th November has drifted from being a day on which we lament the cost of war and pray for peace towards being a day on which we celebrate our military in a very partisan way. Wearing Poppies has subtly become understood as supporting our soldiers at war rather than remembering all the victims of war regardless of political allegiance. Unquestioning support of the military is now main-stream, to criticise soldiers has become a form of heresy. (If you take offense at me expressing this opinion then that illustrates exactly my point)

All of this is nothing new, in the 1930s there were significant numbers of First World War veterans who felt that their experience, and the deaths of their comrades, were being used as a justification for future uses of violence. These men rejected attempts to give retro-active meaning to their (as they saw them) pointless military experiences, or to the (as they saw it) pointless death of their fellow soldiers, and spoke against a cheap military jingoism which was beginning to grow amongst a younger generation who hadn’t experienced the horrors of the Somme or Paschendaele.

Today’s time of prayer for peace has been quite eye-opening. It has allowed me to see a different, perhaps more life-giving, way of marking Remembrance Day.  A day to free ourselves from the partisanship of only mourning our own dead; a day to rid ourselves of the immediate assumption that what is ‘us’ is always righteous; a day to be very cautious in declaring any war worth the price; a day to question ourselves as to the ways in which we can be builders of peace; and above all a day to let the indescribable pain of war overwhelm us and in the midst of this pain to allow ourselves to be inspired to change.

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood 
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, 
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, 
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest  
To children ardent for some desperate glory, 
The old Lie;

Dulce et Decorum est Pro patria mori.

Intramurals (Sports Day) - Dance and Sports Competitions

Here are some highlights of the Dance Competition which was part of their Intramurals (Sports Days). Participation was compulsory for all students, some were more keen than others. Steph and I had to judge the Dances! If your interested, the woodwork students won.



and after the dance competition came the sports.....



Intramurals (Sports Day) - Opening Ceremony

This is the Opening Ceremony for the Vocational Training Centre's Sports Day (two days actually). No pressure London 2012 but if this is how they open school sports days here.......

Celebrating the Dead

In British culture the idea of celebrating death is very alien, our cemeteries tend to be places of quiet, places where exuberant joy is considered inappropriate, a subdued manner is the expectation. Here is the Philippines the culture is very different.

1^st and 2^nd November are days which belong to the dead. Virtually everyone goes to the cemeteries to visit their deceased relatives. During the days either side transport networks are at their busiest with people travelling back and forth, to and from their family homes and family places of burial.

The atmosphere in the cemeteries is not of mournful lament and quiet weeping. 1^st and 2^nd November are days of celebration. Families are reunited over the graves of their common dead. The whole day is spent in the cemetery, prayers are shared, picnic food is eaten, barbecues are lit, board games are played.

In the cemeteries of the better off tents are set up over the graves sheltering the living from the sun. Fast-food franchises set up temporary branches, vendors wander around selling flowers, candles, balloons, ice-creams and even rubber skeletons. Children play ball games in the roadways.

The atmosphere in the poorer cemeteries is much the same sense of festivity only there is less space. Above ground concrete ossaries, sometimes two stories high, stack mortal remains four or five people high. Families are squashed together trying to find the space to decorate their family graves with paint, candles and flowers.

These two days are very special days of festival but they are only the pinnacle of an ongoing devotion to the dead that exists here. Daily prayers are prayed for, and asked of, those who have died. A very immanent sense of relationship is maintained with those who have died. Death is talked about freely, it is certainly not a subject that is feared or hidden away from.

The experience of visiting the cemeteries has been fascinating but also strangely disconcerting. My European mindset shies away from focussing too much on the subject of death at times when it doesn’t have to. Perhaps I maintain some less than fully conscious superstitions about death which my mind prefers to leave hidden? Death is usually a subject I prefer to keep away from normal life in a walled off space different from the rest of life.

The practises here are both an inspiring eye-opener and a deep challenge. 

Hobbies Evening

I ought to acknowledge that many of these young people are far more gifted with performance talent than I am. This is particularly true of the artists, below are the finally results of their work.

 

Father Mac's Feeding Programme

Last week Steph and I went out with Fr. Mac to help with his feeding programme. He and a team of young volunteers visit the very poorest parts of Cebu to give out food on the streets.

There is nothing as pure as..........

They Pray a lot here

Steph and I have been living here at DBTC for  two weeks. In some ways it feels like much longer yet at the same time it feels like we've only begun to scratch the surface of what goes on here.

Four institutions inhabit the same campus here, they each have a different timetable and different routines. One thing which is common to all four is the emphasis on prayer.

Every morning the vocational students begin the day with a 6.30am mass, later on they have prayer during a morning assembly, the working day ends with more prayers at another assembly and every evening the students who board pray the rosary while walking up and down the playground.

The High school and Primary school students also begin each day with prayer. During October they are praying the rosary together everyday at 7.15am . Every week each year group shares a mass and every week the pupils have the opportunity to go to confession.

None of this religious practise seems forced. Of course there are pupils told off for being stupid during prayers but I've also seen groups of pupils holding their own times of prayer or praying individually beside a statue of Mary. Before a football match starts the players of both sides will pray together on the pitch, before every lesson the class will pray a short prayer together.

We have no way of knowing yet whether this is typical of the Philippines or happens just in Salesian schools. However I think it is fair to say that religion is a lot more practised and a lot more visible in the Philippines that it is in Europe. The local parish 'Our Lady of Lourdes' is said to have a Sunday mass attendance of about 20'000 worshippers. Religious inscriptions appear everywhere on houses, shops, cars and buses. The people here will speak of God much more readily than we do in Europe, God is thanked regularly and invoked easily.

What does all this say about the Philippines, it is far too early for us to make any judgements. Is all this prayer a sign of deep spirituality or a fake veneer of cultural religion? We cannot say. This is culture very distance from our western separation of private and public life with religion very much kept in the private sphere.



Induction of the New Vocational Trainees: Friday 15th Oct

.......and here is what the trainees were preparing for.

(See my previous Blog entry if you don't understand)

Induction of the New Vocational Trainees: Thursday 13th Oct

The day after Super-Hero day and the hoop game the vocational trainees were hard at work preparing for another challenge on Friday.

Address

we've been here at DBTC for just over a week now and we've finally gotten round to finding out the Postal Address.

Matthew and Stephanie Neville,

Salesian Residence,

Don Bosco Technology Centre,

PO Box 271,

6000 Cebu City,

The Philippines.

All post is most welcome!

Induction of the New Vocational Trainees: Wednesday 12th Oct - Part 2

here is the second part of the video

Induction of the New Vocational Trainees: Wednesday 12th Oct - Part 1

While we are here in the Philippines our main role is going to be teaching English and Maths to the vocational trainees who are taking course on Mechanic, Carpentry, Electrics and handyman skills. However before the courses start all the students have the attend a three week induction process.

This video and another which will appear shortly are of what they were doing on Wednesday last week.

Moving to DBTC

On Tuesday of this week Steph and I left the Salesian Provincial House and moved to the Don Dosco Technology Centre (DBTC). This is where we will be living and working for the rest of our stay here in Cebu.

The Technology Centre is comprised of four part.

An Elementary (read Primary) School,

A High School,

A College – running higher level courses for over 16s

A Vocational Training Centre – running skills based course for over 16s

Most of the students live in the local area and come daily but there are about 65 boarders who come from the villages and town in more remote parts of Cebu Island.

Our principal work will be helping the Vocational Training Centre Students with their English and Maths Lessons.

For the moment we are just settling in so there isn't too much to say, here are some photos which show you what the place looks like.

A City of Contrasts

A city of contrasts. A city of differences

Shanty towns stand alongside homes of a far better standard than those in which most western Europeans live. Air-conditioned shopping malls filled with famous international shopping chains stand next to, and tower over, rustic local markets where food is sold off tarpaulins stretched on the ground. Plush, spotless branches of McDonalds, Starbucks and KFC can be found in the most unlikely places, nearby vendors can be found selling hot meat fresh cut from a whole pig roasting on the side of the road. 

To walk the streets in some area is to pass kareoke bars a plenty, sometimes more food stalls than there seem to be people and to occasionally come close to tripping over a live chicken tethered to the curb by it's foot, or a small child who is surely too young to be playing so close to a road. Then all of a sudden there appears a smart looking restaurant with a polite security guard on the door beckoning you inside. Dusty streets filled with potholes merge quickly into well maintained grass-verged roads and then are followed once again by glorified dirt tracks.

On the roads top range black windowed people carriers compete with cars glad that there is no one checking MOTs. Motorcycle taxis laden down with six or seven people struggle to get up speed while dodging the potholes. A cacophony of beeping is a constant soundtrack, not as a form of aggression but used as they are intended, as a way of saying "I am here".

Cebu is a not a city which gives itself to quick judgements, there is too much diversity and too many extremes to allow any quickly made judgement to stand for long.

A Change of Plan

Before we arrived in Cebu we were expecting to be working in a home for Boys, not actually in Cebu itself but in a small town outside the city called Liloan.

Yesterday morning Brother Carlo who is responsible for all the volunteers told us that we weren't going to be able to live and work in the Boys' Home. This is for a variety of reasons.

Instead we are going to a different Salesian centre called the 'Don Bosco Technology Centre'.  On the site are a Primary School, Secondary School and a Vocational Training Centre. A handful of  students live onsite but the vast majority live in the local area. Nearby there is a parish church which is run by the Salesians, in the parish buildings there is a youth centre, an education centre to supplement the local schools and give the children somewhere to do homework, and there is a feeding centre which serves food to children from 0-6 who otherwise might not be given adequate food.

So it looks like there will be plenty of possibilities for work we might do.

Given time to make the necessary mental adjustments I think the new project has a lot of potential. We will most likely move there on Monday.

History can be very Contradictory

Arrived Safely!

Steph and I have arrived safely in Cebu.

The total journey time from door to door took just over 24hours.

Our fatigue and our disorientation has been somewhat allayed by having met some good people and having been given a really warm welcome. For the next few days we will be staying in relative comfort at the Provincial house of the Salesian Community in Cebu. In a few days time, after we have recovered from the journey we will move to the Childrens' home where we will be working.

At the moment the excitement of a new beginning is very much mixed together with the nervousness and anxiety associated with all new starts. There is a lot of learn, a lots to reflect on and a lot to experience.

For the moment it is time to rest and recover.

What will I be doing in the Philippines?

In just over a week from now Steph and I will be on a plane flying towards The Philippines. Assuming all goes to plan we are going to be living in the Philippines for the next few months, we will be living and working in a home for boys just outside Cebu City (if you don’t know where Cebu City is then google it!). What we will be doing exactly we are still waiting to find out but there are around 125 boys in the home so I expect there will be plenty to do.

The Boys’ home where we will be working, which is imaginatively called ‘Boys’ Home’, is run by a community of Salesians. The Salesians are a community of religious brothers and sisters which has members living all over the world. The work of the Salesian community is caring for and educating children and young people normally the most disadvantaged of the areas where they work.

The Salesian way of working embraces a holistic and christian approach to education. Formal education takes place in an environment of Prayer, Play and Care. A Salesian teacher would typically give as much importance to being with the children on the playground and the chapel as he would to being with them in the classroom. The Salesians put a great emphasis on the importance of being present alongside young people, loving what the young love. Just being present and willing to spend time with the young is already to value and affirm them.

Steph and I will soon be trying to live out this theory in reality......

James and Steph Bake a Cake

The job of a two-year-old is to remind us of how exciting the simple things in life can be!

The Video above shows Mr Donald Kukio. He works for the Women's Multi-Purpose Co-operative based in Baguio, The Philippines. He makes Nativity Figures from waste newspaper and wood. Steph and I interviewed him in February 2011 when we visited The Philippines in our capacity as directors of Fairground. Fairgrounds is a Bradford based company which imports fair-trade products from several developing world countries. You can find out more about Fairground and buy a set of Nativity figures at  www.fairgrounds.org.uk