So I have been in Manila for a little over a month now and I have been working about the same amount of time. There was concern during the training weeks that some fellows might arrive and the host organisations would not have work for them – this is not the case at Ateno. We arrived on a Sunday at midnight and our first day of work was Tuesday and we have pretty much been working ever since. I use the term “pretty much” because we have taken some work-related time off and have spent our weekend going on some good adventures.

Shivani and I are two thirds of the Canadian contingent of interns; there is also Mae who is here from McGill. The additional interns are all from Ateno Law School and spend a year of their study with the Ateno Human Rights Centre (AHRC). In the same way that ILP had a night at the Duke of York to pass the torch, the interns here also have a similar activity. However their activity is on a beach, in Boracay and involves a lot more swimming, games and drinking. We did not want to appear as stand-offish Canadians so we reluctantly agreed to spend a week with these interns in Paradise, ahem, I mean Boracay. We use the opportunity to get to know a number of the interns that we now spend the majority of our free time with. Some of us even took the opportunity to help them with the AHRC personal information journal.

Aside from the networking experiences of Boracay, we have also used our time here to learn more about the history and the people of the Philippines. To date we have been on two historical walking tours of Manila and have taken a trip to the provinces where we spent time with the locals, met indigenous people and swam in an active volcano (it has a lake on top of it right now).

Work at the AHRC has been going well. When we arrived they informed us that we would be working on a textbook that they would be using for a class the following month. Needless to say we were a little surprised when we started writing the textbook from scratch. Well that is not exactly true, for some chapters we were given a Word document containing a brief outline which was actually incredibly helpful – all we had to do was fill in the blanks. Each chapter is based on one Article of the Convention of the Rights of the Child. We start with the Implementation Handbook and the reports that the Committee on the Rights of the Child has made about the Philippines. The Convention itself is fairly brief so this additional information offers information about how the Convention is to be interpreted and applied. One we know what the Convention means we look at Philippine law to see how it has been implemented. We start with the Constitution, then the Civil Code, then a number of other relevant codes (Family Code, Child and Youth Welfare Code) and finally we look at any relevant Acts that touch on the substance of the Article. After establishing how the Article has been implemented we look to see how it is being enforced. For this we look at the decisions of the Supreme Court as they are the authority over these matters in the Philippines.

Work continues to be exciting and challenging. The class itself started last week and Shivan and I participated in the icebreaker game to get to know the class. Since it is a class about children the game was bringing in baby pictures and the other students would have to identify who was who – needless to say they did not have a difficult time with my picture. I am looking forward to finishing the textbook, starting new projects, taking more weekend adventures and writing my next blog.

posted by Tim Hudek  # 5:43 AM