Visayan Forum Foundation Inc.

Visayan Forum was put up by Ma. Cecilia Flores-Oebanda, a staunch woman advocate that has lived her life working for the protection, freedom and empowerment of marginalized people, especially the trafficked Filipino women and children and the domestic workers.

Ms. Oebanda hails from Negros Occidental, a small province in the Visayas region. She spent most of her life as a freedom fighter and worked with the urban poor, peasants, sugar plantation workers, women, youth and children. Because of her struggles, she became a political prisoner for four years under the Marcos dictatorship. She was released from detention as a result of the 1986 EDSA People Power Revolution that put an end to the dictatorship.

Ms. Oebanda contributes to the larger struggle for the promotion of human rights by addressing the rights of a big number of marginalized children and young women. She is an advocate of social dialogue as a means to ventilate and resolve issues and to build partnerships with stakeholders.

An effective approach employed by Ms. Oeband to fight for the rights of child domestic workers, child laborers, and victims of trafficking is to mobilize partners from both the civil society and the government. Through creative engagements, Ms. Oebanda helps government and partner institutions determine their core competencies and their most effective roles in dealing with the problem.

A recipient of the 2005 Anti-Slavery Award by Anti-Slavery International—the world’s oldest human rights organization—Ms. Oebanda was recognized by the United Kingdom government as one of the Modern-Day Abolitionists in celebration of the Bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act in March 2007. She was lately conferred with the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship 2008 at Oxford University in the United Kingdom by the Skoll Foundation, with Former US President and Nobel Peace Laureate Jimmy Carter as Guest of Honor. Just recently, Ms. Oebanda was also named as one of the Heroes Acting to End Modern-Day Slavery in the US State Department’s 2008 Trafficking in Persons Report.

Such awards and citations given to Ms. Oebanda also reflect the impressive track record of VF as a non-stock, non-profit non-organization in the Philippines. Seventeen years after she founded the organization, VFFI, with its 66 regular staff and 20 volunteers, now operates 9 offices covering 14 project areas all over the Philippines.

VF has offices and centers in the National Capital Region: Manila and Batangas; in the Visayas region: Bacolod, Iloilo, Cebu, and Matnog; and in Mindanao: Davao, Surigao and Zamboanga City. In partnership with the Manila International Airport Authority, VF has just inaugurated the first ever airport halfway house for trafficked women and children at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport. VF also implement projects in identified as trafficking hotspots, such as Bulacan, Southern Leyte, Eastern and Western Samar, Dumaguete, Camarines, Cagayan de Oro, General Santos City, and Cotabato.

BE PART OF THE WAR AGAINST HUMAN TRAFFICKING

About the Founder