Overview
Voice of the Free is licensed and accredited by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) to provide "residential care and community-based programs and services for women and children in especially difficult circumstances." It is most known for its pioneering and documented work withHistory
Voice of the Free was founded in 1991 byNational and International Efforts in Mobilizing Social Partners
* Philippine and Southeast Asian Secretariat, Global March against Child Labor * Convenor, Task Force on Child Domestic Workers in Asia * Convenor, Multi-Sectoral Network against Trafficking in Persons (MSNAT) * Convenor, Anti-Trafficking Task Forces at the Ports * Vice-chair, Philippine NGO Coalition on the UNCRC * Member, ILO Convention 182 National Monitoring Team * Member, National Steering Committee of UNICEF's Sixth Country Program for ChildrenMission
To contribute to the protection, freedom and empowerment of marginalized migrants, especially Filipino women and children, by: # Mobilizing local, national and international efforts that promote safe migration and work for the development of marginalized migrants, especially the invisible domestic workers and trafficked women and children. # Providing integrative services and interventions # Campaigning, capacity-building and organizing advocates and volunteers as agents of change towards policies and programs that sustain long-term development involving women and children, communities, and other social partners. # Leading and sustaining preventive and proactive community-based programsGoals
Institutionalized local, national and international policies that shall protect and provide programs and services for women and children especially the mainstreaming of domestic workers and trafficked persons. Sustained networks, partners, support or survivor groups and other stakeholders to provide protection, justice and developmental opportunities for long-term implementation of programs and services to victims of trafficking, abusive domestic work, as well as other vulnerable groups. Interventions for victims of trafficking and abusive domestic work are set up and strengthened in strategic areas, ports and hotspots. Communities are economically viable and secured.Projects
VF has strategically located its shelters and project areas along the known trafficking routes by partnering with private sector and transport authorities to guard ports and airports. Dubbed "Balay Silungan sa Daungan" (Home Shelter at the Port) and "Bahay Silungan sa Paliparan" (Home Shelter at the Airport), the shelters provides 24-hour "safety and catchment" services for victims of trafficking intercepted by child rights advocates and government personnel. The centers, jointly established by the Visayan Forum Foundation (VF) and the MIAA (BSP) and PPA (BSD), also provides victims of child trafficking a temporary shelter, referrals in pursuing legal actions against their recruiters and telephone hotline counseling. VF-Mindanao regional coordinator, Luzviminda Panes, said the center also provides mechanisms to protect children who travel alone or are stranded at the seaport.Human trafficking
Visayan Forum Foundation has been involved in helping women and children trafficked into prostitution by providing support, education, housing, and legal advice. Visayan Forum Foundation has established that most of the children and young women trafficked to Manila from rural areas in search of work are assured jobs as domestic workers, but in a significant number of cases end up in the sex trade. Based on the statistics provided by the Visayan Forum Foundation, most victims are between 12 and 22 years old. The Visayan Forum work with the Philippine coast guard, the government's Port Authority, and shipping company, Aboitez, to keep monitor arriving boats in the main ports, looking for possible traffickers traveling with groups of children. The organization has operations in four main ports serving Manila, and says it rescues between 20 and 60 children a week.Regional Centers
Metro Manila, Batangas,Other Project Areas
NCR, Batangas, Sorsogon, Cebu, Iloilo, Negros Occidental, Negros Oriental, Davao, Southern Leyte, Samar, Surigao, and Zamboanga.Awards
Department of Justice Resolution
The Department of Justice issued July 29, 2016, a resolution dismissing and clearing Visayan Forum Foundation Officers and key staff on charges of Estafa through Falsification of Commercial documents filed by the NBI in connection with a USAID grant. The four-page decision signed on July 29, 2016, by Senior Assistant State Prosecutor Merba A. Waga, Senior Deputy State Prosecutor Theodore M. Villanueva, and approved by Prosecutor General Claro A. Arellano, stated that there was insufficient evidence to even warrant the conduct of a further preliminary investigation. In August 2012, the NBI probed the foundation for allegedly falsifying documents to hide the misuse of at least $2.1 Million USAID grant for the organization's pioneering anti-trafficking work. "I'm thankful to DOJ that after more than four years of patiently and humbly waiting to allow the justice system to take its course, we can put this allegation behind us. We thank our partners who stood with us during those difficult times. We can now move forward and focus our positive energies to fulfill our greater mission. As of now there are 50 victims and survivors of human trafficking as young as 2 years old under our care in the center of Visayan Forum, they are most important to us." Ma. Cecilia Flores-Oebanda. Visayan Forum Founding President said. According, to the resolution "thus, it is clear that the alleged falsified documents which were purportedly used as supporting documents to liquidate the funds they claimed VFFI received from the USAID and made the basis of their complaint cannot support the charges filed against the herein respondents. There is no gainsaying that the complaint filed against the herein respondents has no leg to stand on."References
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