Bata, Bata, Ano ang Pangarap Mo?

Theme: The Power of Innocence to Create Dreams of the Future

    Message of the Santo Nino/Divine Child in our Age of Higher Consciousness

“But Jesus said, Suffer little children and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.”(Matthew 19:14, King James Bible online)

Abstract: The Art and the Message

Children from the greatest City (NYC) and children from the poorest families in the Philippines talk and interact on a common ground of childhood and dreams.

This interactive multimedia production project is meant to be: Interactive as it conjoin children of the slums in the Philippines dehumanized by environmental degradation and its social impact in the Third World with children of the more fortunate Filipino-American diaspora in the First World who are dehumanized as well by materialism, conspicuous consumption, and technological emptiness, resulting in the rising prevalence of social, behavioral and other mental health consequences; Intercultural as it establish relations between cultures and heritage common to them.

GOAL: To instill core values of Sharing, Responsibility, Solidarity/ Unity and Creativity among children, expressed as an art which message is that of becoming human, one in spirit with others resulting in a stronger foundation for the development of our children.  

"The poor have no exaggerated sense of their own importance and no exaggerated sense of their own.Self-definition is still deeply relational. The Filipino is characterized by a relatively unindividuated ego, a dependent subjectivity.To be is to be in relation. "

(From Faith and Struggle in Smokey Mountain: Hope for a Planet in Peril, pp. 46-47, by Benigno P. Beltran)

OBJECTIVES

1. To conceptualize, create and produce an Interactive Multimedia presentation featuring Filipino children from Smokey Mountain (Mga Batang Tondo) and the Sandiwaan Center for Learning (SCL) in Manila, Philippines and Filipino-American children from New York.
2. To establish and build relations  between these two groups  of children utilizing  the  phrase “Bata, Bata Ano Ang Pangarap Mo?” written & produced by P. Ben Beltran, SVD, as the Question (translated as “Child, Child What is Your Dream?”) and bridge the cultures and heritage common to them .
3. To highlight and emphasize the lyrics and melody of the CD song collection as deemed appropriate for the international audience of Filipinos in the Diaspora.
4. To utilize the Show as a Fundraising Tool for MAID and a Venue for Responsible Childhood Development.

The Beneficiaries

The Sandiwaan Center for Learning (SCL) is a values-based non-profit organization established in 1982 in Smokey Mountain, a huge garbage dump in the city of Manila, where 25,000 people earned their living by scavenging in the trash heaps. The goal of SCL is to pay attention to the needs of, and provide learning opportunities for, disadvantaged children, underachievers and out-of-school youth in slum areas and in indigenous communities.

Vision: Disadvantaged children and out-of-school youth, guided by the principles of integrity, solidarity and creativity, are given educational opportunities to empower them to assume responsibility for creating a sustainable future.

Mission: The SCL, utilizing information and communication technologies, administers alternative learning systems for disadvantaged children and out-of-school youth and through the provision of 21st Century skills, empowers them to create a sustainable future.

The SCL use computers to teach Day Care pupils how to read and write. The 400 pupils in the SCL Day Care Centers are also included in a feeding program and medical intervention in its LINGAP KALUSUGAN project which supports SDG # 3. The project is intended to follow a values-based, web-based and market-based earn-while-you-learn program. The provision of interactive modules in English, Science and Mathematics using an Adaptive Learning Management System with algorithms that can pinpoint where a learner is weak promotes personalized learning.

The Sandiwaan Center for Learning believes that early childhood care and education (ECCE for children 2-5 years old) is the foundation for sustainable development and the beginning point for ESD. The SCL believes that reorienting ECCE towards ESD must begin from birth, in the home and the wider community and so ESD is its educational guiding concept.

COMMUNITY COLLABORATIONS & AFFILIATES

The Benefactors

Philippines

• MAID
• Our EverGreen Mission
• The Heart at Play Foundation

New York

• Banig sa Bood / HTS Foundation
• Bless the City
• Chery Smith “KIDS Philippines”
• Divine Child Foundation
• Las Islas Filipinas.Org
• Miguel Braganza
• School of NY-NJ
• The Nursing Office

Production Team

• The Nursing Office/ Las Islas Filipinas.org
• Purple Pillars Production
• People’s Theater
• Our EverGreen Mission
• The Heart at Play Foundation