Last week, some of my colleagues in the company and I visited a children center and try to bring some christmas cheers as well as donations. This particular center takes care of children from 8 to 18 years of age. The center is called TSF Child Center, TSF standing for Terre Sans Frontiere, which is French for World Without Boundaries. It is almost wholly sponsored by the foundation in France, and thus the name.

This center currently is equipped to handle about 50 children, and is run by a retired volunteer from the French Armed Forces, whose name was Gerard Jose ( his grandfather is Spanish, though he is French). Gerard enlisted in the Armed Forces at the age of 17, and after 25 years of service when he was 43, he was able to get early retirement. For the last 10 years, he has been in the Philippines, and he is running this center on a volunteer basis.

The most remarkable thing you can say about the center is it is run with military discipline and precision. The area is clean, the children are organized, and on the walls you can see a strict schedule to adhere. The children wake up at 5:30 in the morning, take a bath, clean the premises, organize their beds, have a prayer, and then breakfast. Then they have to do their assigned tasks, and at 9:00 they have to be off to school. Lunch is served at a specific time after the children have washed themselves, and there are allocated time for study, homework, and prayers. The children may play only some sports at designated times, and they have to wash their own clothes. On weekdays, they go to bed before 9. Television is strictly on Friday and Saturday nights only, and relatives visitation is on a specific time. Art work and other skill projects adorn the walls.

You looked at the bedrooms, and find them spic and span. You see rows of their schools bags rightfully organized. You looked at the eyes of the children and see them sparkling. They are noisy and lively, but when the adviser tells them to listen, they do. They performed some song and dance numbers for us.

This is how, I believe a center should be run. Centers are not charity, but places where people can develop themselves so that they will be ready for the world. Gerard tells me that while they accept children upon the social welfare agency’s recommendation, they try to do their best for two years, after which the child have to be reintegrated to the family, broken as it may be.

I am impressed, and when they asked me to deliver a talk, I said so. I told the children that they should be grateful to their tutors and to Gerard, not because they fed them, but because they taught them to be organized, and to respect themselves. They take the time to make sure that they learned skills, and learn responsibility. That, I told them, will see them well when they go out to the world…. That , I told them, the learning of good habits early in life will be the greater legacy in which they will thank the center as long as they live.