Kaibigan Ministry Reaches Out to Aging Street Dwellers

Gray-haired street dwellers listen as a Kaibigan Ministry worker shares a message from the Bible.

Aling Idad (not her real name) tucks a wisp of gray hair behind her ear and clutches a bag closer to her body. It contains everything she owns -- a few clothes and a foldable umbrella.  She gazes into the distance and remembers her childhood home on the shore of a small island, so different from Roxas Boulevard where she lives today with all its honking, smoke-spewing cars and buses.

Aling Idad is living her final days on the streets of Baclaran, Paranaque City, having drifted away from her family. She and dozens of other homeless senior citizens are a common sight outside the nearby Catholic shrine.

Angel Diel, worker of the Kaibigan Ministry which reaches out to street dwellers, says dozens of homeless elderly street dwellers choose to live on the streets of Baclaran where "malakas ang diskarte" or where it is easy to find ways to avoid going hungry.  Baclaran is both a shopping mecca and home to the prominent Redemptorist Church.  Throngs of shoppers and devotees can be expected to share a coin or two.

Several graying street dwellers from this area have been brought to the Kaibigan Center in Pasay for medical treatment and one elderly woman has been brought to the Kaibigan resettlement village in Nueva Ecija where she can live the rest of her life in a peaceful rural setting.