VOICES - Cecilia Flores-Oebanda
Channel: THE WELLBEING PROJECT
Date: 2019-02-27

Maria Cecilia Flores-Oebanda, Founder and President of Voice Of The Free (formerly known as Visayan Forum Foundation) promotes the rights and development of marginalised migrants and addresses modern-day slavery, especially human trafficking and the exploitation of domestic workers.

"I can still remember the last word that I told my mother. I told her just to hang on because we'll win this revolution soon. So she said: "Ok, you just take good care." And I don't realise that's the last time that I saw my mother. We never met again. At the start, I think I was only around fifteen years old. We had a very tyrant president and the political situation in the Philippines was not really stable. I became a youth leader who organised young people to tell the story about the liberation theology. And before I knew it, I was one of the three female commanders of the underground movement. It’s very difficult to be a guerrilla fighter when you are pregnant. So I had my first child when I was fighting in the mountain. I was forced to give him up. And then I received the news that my mother died. After that it really changed me, you know? I become harder. I hate the world. I was lost. I lost really my real person there. 
So, we have this running gun battle, with my eight months belly. We are trapped. We are surrounded by the military. I had my assistant who is always with me; we dug a fox hole. I burried my belly in the ground to cover my child. And then he covered me with logs and while he was doing it, trying to cover me, he was hit by the grenade. And I knew that he was still calling my name when he died. And then we were put in prison. I give birth to my second child. We start our family in prison. After four years in prison we were liberated. I wanted to get my other son. I wanted to gather all my children together. And I said that chapter of my life was closed. We are already in Manila during that time. Every Saturday we gather together in one of the universities and we talked about what's going on in our province and how can we work in the province. But what shocked us a lot is that there’s a lot of missing children from the regions who worked in Manila. Child prostitution, prostituted girls... And nobody knows where they are. So that's why we started to focus on children. That's where the Visayan Forum started. The Visayan Forum becomes really my life. And made me also reflect on what is the meaning of all of this, and the sacrifices, and where does myself stands on this. And I know that’s the only time that I realised that I have so much trauma within me. That all that I had in my life, I didn’t have any time to mourn. I didn’t have any time just to process what was going on in my life. I was just like a headless chicken who just continued to run, and run, and run, and run. In The Wellbeing Project, I was able to go back to the original form of myself. I think it's the first time that I have really come to confront all my guilts that I had to confront all my pains. I become cheerful again, I make a choice to become really my purpose of direction in life. I do my work better now because I think I am not coming from the hate. My dream is just really to share the joy and the knowledge and the gift that I learned from The Wellbeing Project. Because for me it's really a gift, you know? And being joy, being happy is always a choice. And it is not other's people business to make you happy. It's only you and you that can make yourself happy. And joyful in this life."