“We would rather strengthen their actual survival skills in the street rather than blame them for being in the streets in the first place. – Ruth Lehmann (one of the founders of Tambayan), 1997
Banking on several years of experience on Children’s work, and six months of months of conceptualization, consultation, and research by three founding women – Sister Cecilia Fonacier, Ruth Lehmann and Edith Ong Ante Casiple, Tambayan was established in February 6,1996 amidst the backdrop of the so-called ‘buntog phenomenon’ among street children in Davao City.
It was established as a program to respond to the needs and issues of the stigmatized adolescent girls on the streets. During this period, aside from the stigma and discrimination that girls on the streets faced, the NGOs catering to girls on the streets were minimal as compared to that of boys. The Sisters of Charity Netherlands provided the first grant.
At the beginning, it was clear that Tambayan will do no moralizing, and that they did not intend to force the girls to leave the streets. It was to provide open services that required no pre-conditions for availment.The general framework then was that:the staff were there to respect street children, to listen to them, to look at them as the one’s being wronged by society, to reach them where they are and help them enhance their self-esteem in the hope that it will help the street kids develop more options.
Interaction with the girls through street work confirmed that media reports on buntogs were indeed prejudiced. Many children are on the streets to escape abuses at home. On the streets, the children – both boys and girls – fend for themselves and hang-on to each other for survival. And that the much-sensationalized aspect of sex, is one such activity that enables some of them to cope with street life, along with scrounging for odd jobs (vending at the market, washing cars) and hanging-out with groups or gangs for protection.
Amidst the discrimination and stigma accompanying children on the streets, it was also confirmed that girls experience another layer of abuse because of their gender. They are not only judged by the public in harsher terms (buntog, prostitute), they also experience exploitation among their male peers on the streets. More significant is that many of the girls simply accepted this treatment as consequential to their taking-out on the streets, pushing the cycle of abuse further.
During Tambayan’s first year of operations, programs evolved as the need for them were expressed by the girls.