The Meaning of Preda

People’s Recovery, Empowerment and Development Assistance (PREDA) Foundation

The Work of the Preda Foundation

We at Preda Foundation are a team of Filipinos that are giving freedom and a new lease of life to girls rescued from the streets, brothels, human traffickers and sex offenders and pedophiles. We rescue young boys fifteen years and younger from government detention cells where they are bullied and physically and sexually abused and suffer sub-human conditions on little food and deprived of their children’s rights.

The Preda homes for boys and girls are separate homes in the Zambales countryside in fully-equipped and spacious open buildings. They live in a happy family and community helping each other and overcoming the terrible traumas they have endured. There is a full professional staff in each home as part of the community, implementing the activities and programs. There is an average 35 boys and 40 girls in each home respectively.

The homes are open centers set in a natural beautiful setting without guards, gates, walls or fences and the children are there of their own free choice. They learn, play games, enjoy sports, have group dynamics, attend school, go on outings and attend group sessions, counseling and emotional release therapy.

In the home for girls, the emotional release therapy helps them to voice out all their pain and hurt and cry it out and be free from it and the fear of their abuser by confronting him or her. It empowers the children and gives them courage and self-confidence to grow in their personality and develop character and overcome family problems. They have the courage to file legal complaints and testify against their abusers and win convictions in the courts of law. Read here more below about the life in the Preda community.

Family therapy also helps them towards reconciliation with their parents and relatives and prepares them for an eventual successful reintegration with a supporting and safe family. The Preda Foundation continues to provide emotional, legal, and educational assistance when the children are reintegrated. They return to the Preda home for reunions.

The social workers of the Preda Home for Boys rescue young boys below the age of 15 from the sub-human cells and detention centers of Luzon and especially those of Metro Manila. They bring them to the New Dawn (in Filipino: Bukangliwayway) Home for Boys which is an open free place where they can choose to remain and recover and overcome their trauma. Many are abandoned, abused and neglected street children. They receive full support, affirmation, encouragement, respect and also emotional release therapy. They go to school or get basic education in the home through alternative learning systems. They receive values formation, participate in group dynamics, meetings and have sports, games and outings. All are part of life in the therapeutic family where a professional staff cares for them.

Preventive Education Seminars

Preda Foundation also has a preventive education team that goes to schools- elementary, high school and college- and other public gatherings and gives training-seminars on the rights of children, how to protect them and how people can and report abuse. They reach parents, teachers, government officials and duty bearers with a message of women’s and children’s rights and dignity. The team offers legal and counseling help to battered and trafficked women. They use a puppet show to pass the message of children rights to parents and children and distribute a hotline calling card, comics, pamphlets and posters throughout the communities.

Preda Foundation is a Philippine human rights social development organization working since 1974 with its main office in Upper Kalaklan, Olongapo City.

The heart of our mission is working, educating and advocating human rights and especially children’s rights through public seminars and a theater group that tours internationally. We use the internet at www.preda.org and Preda Foundation Facebook page to promote the values we believe in. We promote a just and fairer world where social equality, justice and human dignity and rights are respected by all for all.

We stand for the dignity of women and children and promote education for girls and positive employment and work with dignity for young people and campaign to end sex tourism and the commercial sexual exploitation of the poor in brothels and sex bars and on the streets.

We work to empower impoverished and vulnerable children and are committed to Gospel values with a vision to make through word and action these values a reality in as many lives as possible.

Preda Fair Trade helps hundreds of people produce, earn for, feed, and educate their families. The project helps them organize themselves learn their rights and to help them market their mango products in return for fair prices and bonus payments and village projects such as water wells and community toilets in the villages .The project helps farmers in Mindanao and in the indigenous communities of Zambales. Preda is providing educational assistance to many children of the indigenous farmers. The development helps prevent human trafficking by keeping the families together in their villages and the children in school and prevent migration to the cities. See more on www.predafairtrade.net