About Preda
People’s Recovery, Empowerment and Development Assistance (PREDA) Foundation
The Mission of Preda Foundation
Preda is a registered, licensed and accredited non-government organization in the Philippines. It stands for People’s Recovery, Empowerment and Development Assistance (Preda) Foundation.
Preda’s mission is to defend and promote human rights and dignity through direct action in rescuing, protecting, healing and empowering exploited, trafficked and abused children, giving legal assistance, and aftercare. It aims to prevent exploitation through sustainable development, and fair trade for poverty alleviation.
The work of Preda Foundation is focused on alleviating the physical, emotional, psychological and sexual abuse and suffering of children and preventing abuse through community education and social media.
A child is any person below 18 years of age.
The work extends to helping battered and trafficked women, indigenous people and protecting the environment and alleviating poverty by economic development and promoting fair trade enterprise.
Protecting and healing abused children.
Preda has a large professional staff dedicated to the rescue and protection of girls from abusers and traffickers and healing of the children (ages 6 to below 18) through therapy in residential homes. Abused children are referred to Preda homes through municipal social workers, members of the public, parents and prosecutors. They are also rescued through direct action of Preda in coordination with government authorities.
Children in conflict with the law (CICL) and exploited and abused boys are released from government detention and are referred by government social workers on the request of Preda staff to the care and healing therapy and educational services of the Preda Home for Boys. Abandoned street children as young as nine years old are welcomed and given a new start in life through education, values formation, empowerment and vocational training.
Preda is a fully licensed and accredited social welfare and development organization by the Standards Bureau of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD). It is accredited by Philippine Council for NGO Certification and by the Philippine Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) as a “done institution.” Having received four nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize since 2001 to 2017 and after receiving several human rights awards, Preda is recognized internationally for its peace-building work through advocacy and practical healing action for rescuing and helping victims of human rights violations in dire circumstances and winning an average of 16 court convictions of traffickers and abusers each year.
The heart of the Preda mission is working for a just and fair world where equality, justice, human dignity and rights are respected by all. Empowering impoverished and vulnerable people is at the heart of the Preda mission based on these humanitarian values and the mission and vision of Preda and all its members is to make these values a reality in as many lives as possible.
The goal is to help people realize and be mindful and aware of their dignity, rights and potential, that they are important and everyone has equal rights and value as persons.
Preda’s economic assistance to the poor and deprived people is of equal importance as the Preda social and humanitarian services. Several hundreds of poor people benefit from the Preda Profairtrade Development Enterprise, a business project that builds up the abilities and skills and production capacity of poor farmers and indigenous people. This is to encourage and empower them to produce organically-grown and harvested mango fruits and banana and earn, feed and educate their families in a sustainable way. At the same time, they receive human rights and child rights education training in their villages by Preda community workers.
The Preda Fair Trade project buys at high fair trade prices the least popular variety of mango with low market value. Then, Preda Fair Trade works to have them certified as organic, meeting EU organic standards, processed by contract to dried mango and mango puree, for sale to European distributors. The growers/farmers receive profit- sharing and the rest is donated to support the Preda children’s homes.
Preda advocacy work proposes new laws and amendments and lobbies and campaigns to lawmakers for them to pass child protection laws. Preda has succeeded in helping to pass laws to control the child abuse images on the Internet. It campaigns on the international stage and has speakers and presentations at conferences and webinars with the United Nations and others.
Preda successfully lobbied for the Anti-Child Bride Law and for the law increasing the age of sexual consent from 12 to 16 year. It also successfully lobbied for the retention of the minimum age of criminal responsibility (MACR) at 15 amidst pressures from the Philippine president to lower it to 12.
Preda also welcomes Internships and qualified vetted volunteers.
Preda action for peace
A major contribution of Preda was initiating and promoting the “Life after the Bases” campaign- a ten-year long campaign to remove the US military and naval bases in the Philippines and to convert them under Philippine civilian authority and conversion to economic zones. This greatly reduced the reliance of the City of Olongapo on the sexual exploitation of women and children and provided jobs with dignity. It removed the danger of nuclear presence and contamination, possible nuclear accident or attack.
The Preda Foundation works with local and national government agencies to promote human rights and with international development aid agencies to implement humanitarian and development projects.
End
