"We appreciate your help"

Lulu, seen here with her children and grandchild last Christmas, speaks about her 'Labor of Love' in a recent email:

"We're continuing to make the complex a real nice place for our residents and the drop-ins. making some little successes in sourcing out for the repair of the senior citizens building and the construction of the day care resource center aside from the girls' and boys' homes.

We have 56 day care centers all over Lucena City and we're constructing a gym cum-training and development center for the children and their parents. The respective day care parents' organizations were organized into a federation. Then they raise funds annually so they could build this center, phase by phase. We have programs/activities for children and parents who drop by and utilize the gym by cluster/group. One day care center serves like 30-100 children the whole day. They come here for their play and phy. exercise activities. Parents attend our seminars for effective parenting, prevention of domestic violence, and enhancement of paternal roles. They come to apply for livelihood assistance too (skills training and micro-financing of their enterprise).

We're really a little too busy making the complex a real show case of welfare programs and services. The city owns the property; I try to make as much development as possible to benefit our elderly, disabled, children, women and fathers sectors. This on top of our community-based services, meaning delivering services to right where the marginalized families are. We have the center-based and community-based types of programs. Center-based is the residential care programs where we cater to children in difficult circumstances round the clock. And facilities where welfare sectors could come and be served at our resource centers.

Community based is right at the communities. 9 social workers cover the 33 villages or barangays. They organize, train and help families rise out of their poverty situations thru our programs for the various sectors. We organize associations of parents, elders, persons with disabilities and youth. When trained and developed, they also serve as volunteers like in peer group helping and in so many ways. Even the poorest of the poor have something to offer. For the record one barangay has a population of from 10,000-30,000. Total population of Lucena in 2005 was 220,000. The poor would be like 47%.

We have 2 social workers and 7 house parents at the complex, 1 midwife, and lots of volunteers and students helping us.

The senior citizens do come to apply for national ID, and be served at the Geriatric clinic (a project of our club the RC Cosmopolitan Lucena) and the adult day care. They don't reside at the center, they just drop in. This center is run by volunteers, the Fed. of Elderly Associations of Lucena. SM Lucena was tapped to repaint their center, repair the roofing, and to create a mural to make this center more elderly-friendly. The mural is much like the SM activity center this outfit created for the children. SM is like Macy's to you. It's everywhere in the country. Got quite friendly with the local mall managers and the SM Foundation so we got their support. My Rotary affiliation also brings in much support for our clientele. Been serving the local chamber too for contacts and networking. That's really how we could make real big changes around here, or make the impossible, possible. The Local Government is our primary source of funds but limited also so we have to be creative around here. Am speaking of my role as the head of the government-run Dept. of Social Welfare and Dev't. I wear many hats. Have to do this to be able reach out to friends/associates locally and internationally.

Just waiting for the quotation for the water purifier, the fabricated beds, durabox cabinets, etc. sum of which may come up to the tune of US$ 13,000. We're still working on it. We all are digging deep into our pockets to make a difference.

Mabuhay,

Lulu