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QIS is Viva’s solution to overworked, undertrained child care workers around the world. Anyone who’s worked in any kind of office or group situation, or played on a sports team, knows that it’s easier and less stressful when everyone knows how to do their job. Or, imagine your office without a filing system: it would be chaotic without basic organisation. The people who devote their lives to caring for children at risk are passionate and committed, but also they are often untrained and inexperienced. Through QIS, project leaders learn the skills they need to run an efficient, professional and loving programme for children. Projects that provided adequate care for children before going through QIS provide excellent care for children afterwards.
Part one of our mission in Manila was to train three people how to teach QIS to others. We were blessed with three experienced people who work together very well and caught on extremely quickly. Most of our time in the Philippines was spent training these three so they would be ready to lead QIS by the time we left.
Part two of the mission was to recruit projects to actually go through the QIS training. Here a truly amazing thing happened. Two networks that have not worked together before joined up to take QIS. These were the Philippine Children’s Mission Network (PCMN), a nationwide group of projects; and the 180˚ Alliance, a worldwide network of projects working with street children. Not only have these networks committed to QIS, but for the first time they’re collaborating together to bring better care to more children right in their own neighbourhoods.
Our goal was to have 25 projects from within PCMN and 180˚ sign up to take QIS. We invited 37 projects to our ‘launch day’. And – what a miracle – representatives from exactly 25 projects showed up! 10 of these signed up on that very day, 13 asked for a follow-up meeting with our freshly trained QIS teachers, and only two gave us no response.
Manila is a metropolis made of multiple cities, with tens of thousands of street children, and hundreds of thousands of children living in poverty. The projects that have committed to QIS will cover most of the city. To start off our launch party we all sang the Bluetree song “God of this City”, a perfect representation of what God is going to do through these people. (And interestingly, Bluetree themselves have recently joined together with Viva to tackle child trafficking issues in Cambodia.)
The project leaders attending QIS will be trained for two years. The subjects covered by QIS are topics that are crucial in the field of caring for children at risk: child protection, caring for staff, financial accountability, project planning and design, governance, and child wellbeing – physical, emotional, spiritual and developmental.
Along with these standard QIS topics, the Filipino group will also learn about child advocacy, particularly in the area of child domestic labour. Many children in Manila who come from poor families are sent to work in the homes of wealthier people, often for no pay, where they may be beaten, sexually abused or even killed.
We had an exciting visit from a representative of the Filipino government, a section head from the DSWD (equivalent to the Department of Social Security) on our launch day. Her department realises the value of improving the quality of local projects, but the Filipino government simply can’t help every project that needs it. Her visit really encouraged us that the Filipino government supports Viva’s work.
QIS training hasn’t started yet in Manila, but it’s off to an excellent start. I was satisfied and ready to come home to the UK. But something going on diametrically across the world provided one more stressful hurdle for me to jump – a certain Icelandic volcano erupted halfway through my stay in Manila and threatened to keep me there for longer than I’d planned. But, as through the entire trip, God provided a way for things to go forward smoothly. I was able to print my ticket the day before, walked through the sizeable crowds of people waiting to get home at the airport, and got on the flight I had booked! A perfect ending to a successful trip!
~ S. in Oxford
To learn more about QIS: www.viva.org/qis.aspx
For more on Viva's partnership with Bluetree: www.viva.org/Doorstep.aspx
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