"We stand firm to continue our fight," Ma. Cecilia Flores Oebanda said last night in a ceremony to celebrate the recognition given to her and Visayan Forum Foundation by the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship.
The award is given to organizations and individuals whose development work provides solutions to the world’s urgent social and economic issues.
A former child laborer, a freedom fighter and an activist against human trafficking and child labor, Oebanda, or Nanay Day to the children and women she has helped, is the first Asian to receive the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship. Coming from humble beginnings in the island of Visayas, she was a child laborer herself, selling fish and scavenging when she was five to help her family survive.
As a freedom fighter, she was involved in the insurgency movement against the Marcos regime during Martial Law and was imprisoned for four years with her husband and children. Today, she is an advocate of children’s and women’s rights, an activist against abuse and exploitation.
Nanay Day is the founder and president of Visayan Forum Foundation, a non-government organization that serves marginalized and exploited migrants especially those in invisible and informal sectors.
"Sad and compelling my story may be, but it is nothing compared to the story of millions of young domestic workers in the Philippines and throughout the whole world," said Nanay Day in one of her speeches.
Visayan Forum (VF) with the leadership of Nanay Day has been at the forefront of pushing legislation for the security and welfare of children domestic workers, and victims of trafficking. She also created the first domestic workers association, SUMAPI, and is behind the legislation, Batas Kasambahay, a law that protects domestic workers from slavery and exploitation.
The Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship was awarded to Nanay Day and VF at the University of Oxford in England last March 27, 2008 through the nomination of Give2Asia and The Asia Foundation, a non-profit and non-government organization committed to the development of the Asia-Pacific region.
Nanay Day was also a recipient of the Anti-Slavery Award in 2005, the oldest international human rights organization in the world.- By Stefanie Leuterio, abs-cbnNEWS.com/Newsbreak