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Port of Call |
LAST UPDATE July 12, 2005
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| site design imagesparkle.com |
| January 1-2, 2004 |
Manila, the Philippines |
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| New Year's event |
Manila, the Philippines, was Peace Boat's first port of call in for 2004. Peace Boat participants were first greeted by the New Year event hosted by Peace Boat and the People's Global Exchange, one of the local NGOs that helped organize our visit to the Philippines. In the inaugural speeches, a representative from People's Global Exchange and Ryo Ijichi, Director of Peace Boat's 44th Global Peace voyage, expressed our shared determination that the civil societies of Japan and the Philippines will work together to make the coming year more fruitful in peace-building efforts than 2003, a year marked by the ongoing war in Iraq.
Performances were given by Ashin, a legendary Filipino band, a local children's choir, as well as Kamau Abayomi, Machingura, Naomi Quinones, and Tokyo Gyangstar from Peace Boat. The event was held on the bank of the Pasing River at sunset, and Peace Boat participants enjoyed home-cooked traditional Filipino food and casual interaction with the local people who gathered there. |
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| A poster in the DAWN office |
On the second day, a Peace Boat study tour visited long-time partner Development Action for Women Network (DAWN) in Manila. Established in 1996, DAWN has assisted Filipino women who have worked as entertainers in Japan, as well as their Japanese-Filipino children (JFC). Many of these women are lured into exploitative jobs in the hospitality and sex industry and are often subjected to a range of abuses. Often these women end up pregnant and are then abandoned by their employers and/or partners, meaning that they may lose the requirements to maintain their visa status and are forced to return to the Philippines.
DAWN has an office and a vocational training center. The DAWN Center is where the organization offers its unique alternative livelihood programme for women, SIKHAY (self-awareness in Tagalog). It involves teaching as well as providing women with facilities for sewing, weaving using handlooms and making tie-dye products. Through this programme, the organization offers therapy and business skills training for the distressed women, helping them to reintegrate into Filipino society. To date, 80 women have graduated from the SIKHAY programme having regained confidence in themselves and their ability to provide for themselves and their families. Their high-quality handmade products are sold in the Philippines and Japan and help former migrant women to provide income support and enrich their family life, which is the ultimate goal of the organization. Peace Boat also offers contribution by selling their products onboard and in Tokyo as part of its fair trade initiative. |
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| The Japanese-Filipino children welcoming Peace Boat |
Facts and statistics tell an important part of the story, but to really understand the reality of life for these women and the important role that DAWN plays, the cheerful staff, children, and mothers from DAWN invited us to homemade exchange programme. A video featuring television documentary series offered a portrayal of the reality of life for many Japanese Filipino children and their mothers, a number of whom were seated in the audience.
Due to the harsh working environment in Japan, migrant women who return to the Philippines come back home with a feeling of defeat and demoralization. Additionally, since most of them work as entertainers in the sex industry, they often end up having intimate relationships with their customers and get pregnant. The video showed instances of Japanese Filipino children, sometimes called by derogatory name Japinos, being raised by their grandparents in the Philippines because their emotionally tormented mothers, unable to cope, become addicted to drugs or simply abandon their children. |
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| Children and mothers from DAWN together with Peace Boat participants |
Despite all the hardships, the children we met on this day did not show any sign of grief. Supported by DAWN, these children learn to appreciate the mixed cultural heritages and to believe in their potential to succeed in society. Through education and activities such as their theater production Teatro Akebono (Japanese word for dawn), DAWN also assists former migrant women and their children in coping with their experiences and re-assimilating into their home country.
Through a tour to Japan, DAWN also helps provide the opportunity for children to meet with their fathers, a vital part of helping the healing process. DAWN works to reintegrate families or at least negotiate for the fathers to take a degree of financial responsibility for their children's upbringing. A presentation of DAWN's activities was followed by a cultural exchange programme which included singing, dancing and drawing, allowing the participants to see women and children as more than victims, but as people struggling to build new lives. The programme gave the participants a much more comprehensive view of the reality faced by Filipino migrant entertainment workers in Japan. |
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| DAWN founder and Executive Director, Ms. Carmelita G. Nuqui giving a lecture onboard |
From the Philippines to Singapore, the Executive Director of DAWN, Carmelita Nuqui, came onboard the ship and gave lectures to a wider audience to raise awareness about the issue further. She repeatedly emphasized the importance of bilateral cooperation by the Japanese and Filipino governments as well as civil society organizations in both countries. |
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