Korean nuns help Filipino children achieve better lives

Students of Girlstown, an accredited secondary school, learn sewing skills at the institution based in the province of Cavita, the Philippines. / Korea Times photo by Kang Hyun-kyung

By Kang Hyun-kyung

SILANG, Philippines — Korean nun Park Teresa, a founding member of the accredited secondary school Girlstown for poor children in the Philippines, has seen how education changed the society.

Since the five-year free boarding school program opened in 1985, it has made a significant difference in the lives of many Filipino children, enabling them to break the vicious circle of poverty.

Approximately 60,000 underprivileged children were given access to secondary education thanks to Girlstown in the landlocked municipality of Silang in the province of Cavite, on the southern shores of Manila Bay. They would never have been able to fund their secondary education without the institution’s help and, as a result, their lives might have turned out very differently.

Korean nun Park Teresa, a founding member of Girlstown / Korea Times

Park, who is in charge of the Monsignor Al Schwartz Memorial Center in Silang, calls the Girlstown students and graduates her children. Five other Korean nuns work with Park at the school.

“Our children often say they wouldn’t have been as successful as they are today if they didn’t attend Girlstown or Boystown,” she told The Korea Times on Oct. 23 during an interview at the center. The Sisters of Mary also operate Boystown, a similar school for boys, in Cavite.

The school serves as a steppingstone to higher education and to white-collar jobs. After completing the high school diploma program, more than half of the school’s graduates go on to college, while the rest find jobs.

Every year, Girlstown selects children from poor families in the Philippines through an exam and interviews. The selected students have free access to five-year secondary education, as well as medical and other services at the school’s clinic and facilities.

The front gate of Girlstown / Korea Times

“All our children are from poor families. Their parents and siblings work very hard all year to fund their trips to Silang for the annual family visit in September,” Park said.

The Korean nun first came to Manila in 1985 with a mission that aimed to expand the work of the Busan-based religious group Sisters of Mary to the Philippines. After leaving to serve in Mexico for six years and then Korea, Park came back to the Philippines in January 2012.

She accompanied the Rev. Aloysius Schwartz, who founded Sisters of Mary in 1965, a decade after the end of the Korean War, to look after orphans and street children. He died of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, better known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, in 1992 in the Philippines. His remains are laid in the replica of the Virgin of the Poor Chapel located at the left side of the memorial center.

Park called Schwartz “Father Al.” “Father Al asked us to put his mortal remains in the Philippines, even though Busan was where he began his charity work after he was ordained as a priest,” she said.

The remains of the Rev. Aloysius Schwartz, the founder of Girlstown, are laid in the replica of the Belgium-based Virgin of the Poor Chapel located near the Monsignor Al Schwartz Memorial Center in Cavita. / Korea Times

According to her, Schwartz took her and other nuns to Smokey Mountain to help the children suffering there. Smokey Mountain is a large landfill in Manila. It held more than 2 million metric tons of waste and was closed in 1995 after more than four decades. Now an affordable housing area, the site used to be home to 30,000 scavengers and poor people.

“Korea was not that rich in the 1980s. However, I felt Koreans were still lucky compared to the people whom I met in Smokey Mountain. Rubbish was everywhere at that time,” Park recalled.

Park said the late founder of Girlstown had dedicated his entire life to save the poorest of the poor. She said Schwartz was a modest man who didn’t spend a penny for himself. He wore the same clothes and shoes since he first arrived in Korea in 1965. His doctor, who was based in San Francisco, asked him to change his worn-out shoes because they negatively affected his health. However, the priest didn’t follow the doctor’s advice.

“Every day, Father Al bought two or three loaves of bread and Coke in a plastic bag from a street vendor for himself and for us (nuns),” Park said.

After realizing that scavengers and the urban poor couldn’t afford to educate their children, Schwartz established Girlstown and Boystown, which taught those children vocational skills that would help them stand on their own feet after graduation. In 1988, Girlstown had some 3,000 students. The Catholic group later established Girlstown and Boystown in the island province of Cebu which is surrounded by 167 islands and islets.

Stretching in the 15-hectare territory in the quiet city of Silang, Girlstown has two seven-story buildings for dormitories and classrooms, a three-story workshop for vocational training, a modern gymnasium with basketball courts, a stage and mechanical and automotive workshops. It also operates a clinic to provide free medical services to the students.

The school helps the students dream of a better future by teaching them practical things such as sewing, computer and baking skills. Park said some Girlstown or Boystown graduates are now teaching students there and are role models and sources of inspiration for the students.

“We now have 60 teachers who graduated from Boystown or Girlstown. Our current students are motivated to study hard, and some of them have said they would also like to become teachers,” Park said.

She said the institution’s emphasis on English education during the five-year program has enabled many students to become English teachers.

Amelia Luces, the head of Girlstown in Cavite, said the students and their parents are grateful for the Korean nuns’ dedication to serve the poorest of the poor in the Philippines. She said Girlstown graduates are able to help their poor families with the income they earn from their jobs after completing the program. Thus, the students as well as their families become better off thanks to the institution. “That’s why those children and their parents are so thankful to the Korean nuns who made this institution possible,” she said.

Cyra Clarisse Mendoza, who joined Girlstown last year, said her parents and two siblings are proud of her attending the school. She dreams of becoming a doctor, a dream she would not have had without Girlstown.

Riza Riva, a Filipino nun, said the role of Girlstown graduates extends beyond their families. She said they also contribute significantly to the local and national economies.

Consequently, she said, their significant contributions prompted a change in the public’s attitude toward the school. In the 1980s, she said some people harbored reservations about the identity of the institution, with some even alleging that its faculty and staff were communists.

But such misconceptions were soon cleared after they witnessed the success stories of the graduates.

Many Girlstown graduates were able to go to college on scholarship.

In addition, some companies that hire Girlstown graduates pay for their tuition as they attend college part-time.