Staff Blog

Can it really be that Carmelita Baya will not be working for CSC in a few weeks? Since 1985 she has been an integral part of our team here in Cebu. She is the first Social Worker we ever hired, and has been such a strong and vital advocate for our children for 31 years. She has traveled throughout the Philippines in managing the cases of our children. She has escorted children to the United States and been to Japan to represent CSC. Everywhere she goes she exudes love for our children and dedication and perseverance. So many of our children are in families today because of the work of Carmelita. For the past months she has been mentoring our new social workers who will strive to carry on the tradition of quality that she brought to CSC. She has so much knowledge and experience that it will be impossible to  replace her. We thank dear Carmelita for all her great work over the years. She has inspired all of us here in Cebu.

  The night of the 23^rd day of September was a special one for everyone at Cebu Children of Hope School.  It was full of excitement and laughter.  Teachers and students gathered together at the shelter for the Reading Challenge Culminating Activity.  It started with games followed by the awarding of contest winners, s’mores-making and punch drinking. 

      The highlight of the event was the awarding time.  The winners received books as their prize and all the students who met the reading goals got to throw a whip cream pie at their teacher’s face.  It was REALLY fun for everyone, especially the students.  It was also a GREAT experience for the teachers.  This year’s Reading Challenge was a SUCCESS!  

When we take in children at CSC we become important advocates for them. We advocate for them in government offices, courtrooms and with social workers and others who have the power to decide whether they will be given the chance to be adopted. We attend meetings, write letters and affadavits and travel all around the Philippines in support of the children under our care. Our social workers, in handling the case management for them, are equal parts lawyers, counselors, writers and interveners. They work with the birth families, solicit support and cooperation from officials in the communities where they live, gather information, file birth registrations, write social case studies and letters, and attend many, many meetings.

We recently hired two new workers for our social work department. Neither Catherine nor Mardie came to us with exerience in our type of cases. Very few agencies do pre-adoptive case management, so there has been much for them to learn about the legal and procedural requirements in preparing our children's papers for legal adoption. Luckily, we have two veteran social workers, Carmelita and Chris, who have many years of experience advocating for CSC children. Carmelita is soon to retire so it becomes very important for CSC that she spend time mentoring our young and inexperienced social workers in the "tricks of the trade."

The head of our Social Work Department is Klaris, who is also new to CSC, though she has lots of experience as a social worker. She is learning very fast, and does much of the editing of case studies, serves as the liaison with government offices and assigns cases to our social workers.

Please pray for our Social Work team as they advocate for our children in many different ways and settings. They are on the front lines of service to our children and represent all of us with the people who have a lot of influence over their lives. They need perseverance, insight, tact, commitment, patience and lots of compassion for the needs of our precious kids.

Last month the Level A1 and A2 pupils went on a field trip to a couple of places related to their reading unit theme Animals and Camouflage.  It was a chance for hands-ons learning. 

The students went to Crocolandia, a zoo located  in Talisay City and Cebu Zoo located in Lahug.

They were very excited to see the different animals.  The kids wanted to know how the animals live, move and adapt to their environment.  

They kids enjoyed listening to a short lecture.  

They learned animals are important and people need to take good care of animals.  They heard that some animals have not been treated well and are endangered. 

After the lecture the students were allowed to touch some of the animals!

Everyone had a really good time and the kids want to visit the zoos again sometime.

We’re making some changes in preschool.  This is my third year as the preschool teacher aide but this school year is different.  One change is that we have a new main teacher, our principal.  Also, we are using the same lesson plans but taking a different approach when teaching lessons.  The schedule is also different:  the 5 and 6 year old students stay until 11:30 for additional lessons to prepare them for the next level and the 4 year old students go home at 10:15.  

This year I am teaching math for 45 minutes to five kids.  Our first topic was on sorting and classifying. The students enjoyed sorting through objects looking for common attributes like size or color.  One student kept asking, “Sorting ta, Teacher?”  (“Teacher, are we still sorting?”)  I said, “Yes, we are still sorting.”

We moved on to Topic 2 (patterns) and Topic 3 (Numbers 0-5) and he still wanted to know if we were working on sorting.   Every day he kept asking me the same question, “Sorting ta, Teacher?” and I replied the same, “No, we are now on a new lesson!”

Suddenly, one day that little guy asked me, “Patterns ta, Teacher?” (“Teacher, are we in patterns?”)  He had shifted his question! Unfortunately, I had to answer, “No, we are now on numbers”.  But the real thing that is amazing about these conversations is that he is asking the questions in the first place.   This little guy is the shiest of all the students and it has taken him quite a while to feel comfortable about being in school much less being able to ask questions.   I am so proud of how much he has grown.