The poverty situation of families has created the alarming phenomenon of street street children and the increasing cases of child abuse and abandonment. Next to Metro Manila, Cebu is the second largest urban center in the country. In these areas, children roam around begging for food, used in sydicated drugs and make the streets their home - a situation that mirrors extreme poverty and neglect. With the deteriorating standards of living, the Filipino family is torn apart: parents leave their children to look for more income. Migration to urban centers and to work abroad created a vacuum within the family. And as the communities become consumerist, the once caring Filipino community turned individualistic and concerned more of own survival and finds less and less time relating to one another.

Moved by the situation of the children they have come to meet during their travels to the Philippines, concerned Dutch nationals thought of getting involved. Through their organization, The Independent Foundation for Family Affairs (IFFA) based in Holland, and with the help of the Carmelite priests in Manila and Cebu, they settled in the country and established IFFA Cebu in 1998. Through donations, IFFA Cebu acquired a piece of land and erected the buildings that would house the homeless and abandoned children. In October 2001 the management and responsibilities of the foundation were turned over to the Philippine Board, it was re-baptized as "Batang Pinangga Foundation, Inc."

Reviving Caring Communities

The foundation becomes deeply aware that helping the abandoned, neglected and abused children cannot remain a charity work but it should be, if it will be sustainable and successful, a continuous community concern. Thus Batang Pinangga helps revive caring communities who would take back the children from the streets. And this means to revive and re-activate the Filipino cultural value of "bayanihan system". Through this the Foundation hopes that at least the increase of the enormous number of abandoned, neglected and abused children will slow down and hopefully this will contribute to the eradication of this dehumanized and shameful aspect of Filipino community life.

VISION

Being aware that massive poverty, caused by a system that favors the few, has created the shameful phenomenon of the neglected children, Batang Pinangga commits itself to work, and becoming a part of the broad movement, for a just and caring Filipino society.

MISSION

Batang Pinangga helps build caring communities by reviving the communitarian helping hand embedded in the heart of every individual (and Filipino) and facilitates in finding home for the abused, abandoned and neglected children.