By Annabel Consuelo Petinglay/PNA
SAN JOSE DE BUENAVISTA, Antique — Children at the “Pagsapupo” center here are thrilled as they count the days to Christmas and New Year when they will be spending these occasions with their foster parents.
The center serves as a temporary shelter for street children and victims of abuse in the province of Antique.
The “Share-A-Home” program was introduced in 2014 with the goal of allowing children at the center to share the Christmas joy of their foster families or the thrill to greet the New Year.
A girl from Caluya said she spent Christmas and New Year at the house of Caluya Municipal Social Welfare and Development Officer Tess Aguirre in 2017.
“The family of Ma’am Aguirre was so kind to me,” she said in the vernacular.
She said she could not forget seeing the beautiful fireworks during New Year’s Eve in San Jose de Buenavista and enjoyed the food that was prepared by the family.
She said that the “Share-A-Home” program gave her a chance to stay in a house with a normal family setting, so unlike the conditions at the center, where she has been staying since October 2017.
“I’m told that this year, Ma’am Aguirre is again going to invite me for the ‘Share-a-Home’ program so I am really excited about it,” she said.
Another girl said that, last year, her foster parents brought her along when they visited relatives. “Celebrating Christmas and New Year with my foster parent’s house was a new experience for me,” she said.
She said that she wanted other children at the center to also experience the “Share-A-Home” program.
The Pagsapupo Center currently takes care of 12 children: two boys and 10 girls.
The youngest is a four-year-old boy, whose mother is in jail. The oldest is a 17- year-old girl, a victim of abuse.
Pagsapupo Center houseparent Elsie Peroy, in an interview, said they are still looking for other interested families to become foster parents.
“They just have to go to the Provincial Social Welfare Development Office so that they could be assessed by the social worker,” she added.
The assessment is a way to ensure that the child will be taken care of during her stay outside the center.
Peroy said the foster parents are also asked to fill up a form, which will be approved by the Municipal Social Welfare and Development Officer of the town where the child is a resident of.
