Mission World - May, 2009
20.07.2009
Humanitarian Award for Fr Shay Cullen SSC
Fr Shay Cullen was honoured with the Humanitarian Award at the 2009 Meteor Ireland Music Awards at RDS, Dublin on March 17.
Fr Cullen, from Glasthule-Sandycove, Dublin went to the Philippines as a missionary of St Columbans Mission Society in 1969. The award included a €100,000 (AUD $188,600) donation to his work.
Based in the Parish of St Josephs, Olongapo City, he witnessed the adverse social and human problems created by the immense United States Naval Base in the City. The most affected were the youth who were increasingly alienated by the massive sex industry that exploited women and children and spread dangerous drugs among the Filipinos and damaged family life. He saw the number of youths trapped in drug addiction and little or nothing being done about it. Children were being imprisoned for the pettiest of crimes.
He set about founding a program to treat the addicts. In time this program expanded to deal with the vast number of homeless children and young girls caught up in the sex industry. Since then, at great personal risk, he has dedicated his life to helping the country's most vulnerable of people.
Fr Shay says, "Silence is assent to abuse, everyone has a big challenge here to do their piece and stand up for what is right and true. So I began 'PREDA', a project to help the most exploited of the street children, women and young girls." Fr Shay explains what PREDA stands for. "P is for the People we are working with, R is for Recovery, because we recover children from street life, from paedophiles and from the sex industry, E is for Empowerment is to help them feel strong and restore their dignity and restore their sense of well being, D is for Development - to go into society and look at poverty and address the root causes of poverty and the trafficking of children, and A is for Assistance - to help anybody in Need."
"In our Home we can only manage 60 children at one time. The children recover from abuse with the help of our social workers of whom there are 86 professional Philippine people with PREDA now. The children recover and as well we try to educate their parents and give some economic benefits to the parents and so help the child to reintegrate into the family.
"We are also helping to recover children from prison and have succeeded in changing the law so that children of fifteen and below will not be criminally charged. But we feel frustrated because the judicial system is what shall I say, dysfunctional, but the happy part is we can help the children to recover."
The film Actor Martin Sheen, a friend of Fr Shay, said when he saw his work and walked the streets of Olongapo with Fr Shay he was 'bowled over.' He said Fr Shay had become one of his Hero's.
Fr Shay noted that the work of PREDA is also relevant for people from western countries. People get to know that Sex Tourism is promoted under the guise of Tourism.
He has received death threats over the years. "Death threats come when one is confronting crime with evidence of abuses or wrong doing. That's when they want to silence you. That's when we have to speak loudest for Human Rights."
In receiving the Award Shay said the main motivation in taking on such difficult work came from the support he got from the people in the Philippines and also from the people in Ireland and elsewhere over the years. The people of the Philippines were struggling for human rights and dignity so he was greatly encouraged to work along with them. He added that this Award was also recognition of the heroic work being done by Missionary Sisters, Priests and Laity throughout the world.
