We will . . . hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope . . . transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. – Martin L. King, Jr.

On the occasion of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, here is how a Philippine government led by Overseas-Filipino workers (OFW) and expatriates can eliminate, if not reduce, prostitution and the exploitation of street children in the homeland. This is the Martin Luther King-like dream of the prime movers of an OFW-led political party that will contest the May 2010 presidential, congressional and local elections in the Philippines.

Eliminating prostitution and solving the dilemma of the street children is one of the Filipino expatriates’ dreams that will be reduced into a full-blown feasibility study, fully funded and inspired by the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., to wit:

 Go to the Web site of Stanford University’s Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute  ( http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/ ) to download King's most famous speeches, such as "I Have a Dream" from the March on Washington in 1963 or "I've Been to the Mountaintop," delivered on April 3, 1968, the day before he was assassinated at the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee.

To read this writer’s other articles on Filipino women and prostitution, please click on the following hyperlinks:

Are Prostitutes the Cheapest “Commodities” (sic) in the Philippines? (Part I)--As Updated

The Woman Leaders of the Philippines Must Protect their Fellow Women

Does the World Care About Japan’s Modern-day "Comfort Women"?

According to news reports, there are more-than 100,000 street children in Metro Manila alone. Many of these street children have been lured into prostitution. There are also tens of thousands more street children in other big cities in the Philippines. In regard to woman prostitutes, the educated guess is that there are at least a million of them in the Philippines and hundreds of thousands more in Japan and other foreign countries.

The initiative being proposed by this writer is to include the plan of reducing, if not ending, prostitution – whether of Filipino women and/or children wherever they may be – in the OFW-led economic platform that will be presented for the 2010 elections. Initial funding for this idea will come from a part of the present expenditure for congressional and local-government pork barrel, which an OFW-led government will make illegal once it is able to control the national government. Additional funding will come from Overseas-Filipino donors and foreign foundations.

The plan is to transform part of the Philippine military reservations into giant Boys’ and Girls’ Towns where there will be special schools to let them finish their education. The children and women enrolled at these crash-programmed institutions will be offered courses in nursing and other healthcare-related fields. Those who have the athleticism will be tutored also in sports where the Filipinos can excel such as baseball, marathon, softball, soccer and other games.

Why specialize in nursing and other medical professions? Because there is a worldwide demand for healthcare professionals. In the United States alone, there is a looming nursing shortage of about one-million jobs in the next 15 years. Besides the profession of nursing pays more in the industrialized world than the oldest profession. There is also the idea of organizing Filipino-manned hospital ships, medical corps and even engineering brigades for countries that experience natural calamities and/or man-made disasters. Please see this writer’s idea of helping the Islamic world in this article, The SEATO Should Be Revived to Help Pakistan Secure its A-Bombs and Combat Terrorism

Perhaps by 2012 or even earlier, the Filipino-American community will be able to tell the world and America that they have aided in putting into action the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. For what better way to reveal “the glory of the Lord . . . and all flesh shall see it together” than by ending the trade of the flesh in the Philippines? # # #