Now who wouldn’t want that?

On April 24, 2012, at 7:30 pm, Lifeline Foundation Support Team, Inc., held another Parenting Empowerment Seminar at the Lifeline headquarters in BF Homes Paranaque. Candace Schmidt, one of the founding directors of Lifeline, brought her experience as a long-time life coach and mom of four years and conducted the seminar. Parents who attended the event were seen talking and laughing while they related to one another their experiences with their kids.

We live in a society where stress is prevalent and increasing at a fast pace—so we need all the breaks we can get. And parents certainly don’t need the additional stress and guilt of wondering if they are being “perfect” parents for their children. You are your child’s parent. Therefore, YOU are the perfect parent for your child.

Nowadays, we noticed that parents envelop their children in a protective cocoon. One point that Candace made was, “One of the worst things a parent can do for their child is to try and remove consequences from their child’s life.” Allowing your child to fail and to suffer the consequences of their choices is one of the best gifts we can give them. Allowing them to figure out solutions is a sure-fire way to help them develop self-respect.

There are a lot of lessons to gain from the seminar but we’ll break it down to the three most important things parents can do to push stress out of the window.

LAUGH at the molehills. Decide whether the situation you are in with your child is a mountain or a molehill. If it’s a mountain, deal with it. If it’s a molehill, laugh it off. Happy parents are great examples FOR LIFE.

RECOGNIZE that you are the perfect parent for your child. Remove yourself from every platform where you feel you’re being judged as a parent. Let go of guilt that you feel that you are not doing enough for your child. As a perfect parent, your main purpose is not to make your kids happy, but to make sure that they are physically, mentally and emotionally healthy and whole. You are there to love and nurture your kids, not to be their best friend.

SAY whatever needs to be said once, and then walk away. Stress comes when you say the same thing to your child over and over and over and over again.

Be consistent with your child. If there are consequences to their actions, stick with those consequences! In that way, mutual respect is earned since you respect your kids and they respect your word.

REMEMBER: Your word is the standard that rules your house.

Kids are the pride and joy of every parent but if you’re stressed over them then you don’t get to enjoy and share great times with them. Relieve the stress from your life. Build into your kids a life-long gift of having self-respect and knowing the power of their words and their choices. Believe in your child/children and they will thank you for the life lessons you’ve taught them.

In the English Skills course, Lifeline’s volunteer teachers have been teaching conversational English by having the students talk about themselves and their lives, and in the process we get to help them look at their situations from a different perspective. Actual ESL (English as a Second Language) classes have also begun.

The theme of this yearís Human Rights Week Celebration is END IMPUNITY!  Make human rights our way of life.  Impunity is not a word you hear used every day, but we certainly see it in practice every day.  Impunity is defined as exemption from punishment, or freedom from the injurious consequences of an action.

No wonder crime and corruption run rampant in different levels in our society.  Without the reality of consequences inculcated from our earliest childhood, there will be an unprecedented amount of lawlessness in our streets, our schools, our tv screens, our courtroomsóactually, everywhere.

We at Lifeline Foundation believe it is high time for this.  Too long has the Philippines been a nation without consequence.  Without the reality of consequence.  It is widely known that the Philippines has laws that are more than adequate, it is in the implementation of these laws that there is a failure.

The Solidarity Run called for the protection and promotion of Human Rights, in line with the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. More than 30 Government Offices, including the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), the Department of Education (DepEd), the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE), as well as NGOs, LGUs, CSOs and POs attended the Solidarity Run, each bearing a banner that was pertinent to their focus.

Lifeline Foundation was honored to take part in the Solidarity Run. We proudly bore a banner with UDHR Article 7, “Equality before the law,” which is fully in line with our thrust to seek justice for all. We marched and ran along with 1500 other participants, in true solidarity to uphold human rights.

Here are some examples of the widespread corruption in our country. It is estimated that the total loss in the national income due to corruption is 2 trillion pesos over a period of 20 years. One study shows that the Philippines is the third most corrupt in the Asia-Pacific region. There are 107 private armies over the country, and the majority see nothing wrong with this. The issue of extra-judicial killings (EJKís) is a serious one.

Corruption can be mitigated if human rights are protected and integrity is instilled. The inclusive and sustained practice of citizen involvement will ensure human rights. There must be a total rejection of a culture of impunity, said Reynaud Meyer United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Country Director.

When corruption is commonplace, people cannot access justice. Loretta Ann P Rosales, Chairperson, Commission on Human Rights, Philippines.

The 3rd Integrity and Human Rights Conference was moderated and facilitated by Joey Ayala of the Bagong Lumad Artist Foundation Inc.

On March 19, Kirstie had the first of two operations for her legs. The doctors at PGH Plastic Surgery Dept. did a skin-grafting procedure for the open wound on her left leg. One of the surgeons, Dr. Love Gumasing, said that the operation and first week post-op went so well that they discharged her for a 6-week healing period before scheduling the second operation to release the burn contracture of her legs sometime in May.

So, Lifeline Foundation’s social worker Happy del Rosario took Kirstie home to Siquijor on March 30, where she is currently recovering well and is eager to have her second operation.

Thank you again Jana Muller and the Eurogirls. Thank you too to the doctors at the PGH Plastic Surgery Department, One Rescue and Rescue Putatan, Scott and Ces Gordon, Helen Supat and the others who are working tirelessly to help Kirstie literally and figuratively, get on her feet again. Big hearts change lives!

Kirstie Bajo was a freshman at a nursing school in Siquijor when tragedy struck. Kirstie is a bright young woman who had a promising future, and she would have been the first in her family to graduate from college and onto a better life.

One night in May of 2010, when she was 17 years old, she fell asleep while studying by candlelight. Her room caught fire and Kirstie sustained third degree burns over her legs, rendering her unable to walk, and causing her to stop schooling. Lifeline’s friends in Siquijor, Ces Yruma and Scott Gordon, heard of her story a year later and wrote to Lifeline a few days after Christmas in 2011, to see if we could do anything for her.

We knew that helping Kirstie would take a lot of time, and more money than the usual allotment for our Patient of the Month Initiative. And yet we could not walk away from this lovely young woman without fighting for her future.

Enter the Eurogirls- a volleyball-playing, calendar-publishing group from Brussels who’ve got tremendously big hearts. One of their members, Jana Muller, had heard about Lifeline from some German friends who’d joined Lifeline’s medical missions last year, and Jana wrote to us in early January. We met, we told her Kirstie’s story; then the Eurogirls opened their hearts and agreed to sponsor Kirstie’s surgeries and medical treatments.

On March 5, Lifeline’s social worker flew down to Dumaguete to get Kirstie. With the help of our new friends from One Rescue in Dumaguete, under the leadership of Dr. Kenneth Coo (medical director of One Rescue), an ambulance service transported Kirstie from the Dumaguete port to Sibulan Airport. Meanwhile, back in Manila, our Lifeline volunteers met Kirstie together with the EMTs (paramedics) and ambulance of Rescue, Putatan. That same day she was admitted to PGH (Philippine General Hospital), and she is well on her way to walking again, getting restored to a healthy and happy life.

Thank you, Eurogirls, for partnering with Lifeline, for Kirstie’s life and future!”