Life-Enabling Actions Nurturing the Oppressed and Neglected Ministry (LEAN-ON)
The LEAN-ON Ministry creates actions to restore dignity to the abused, oppressed and neglected sectors of society.
These actions include establishing institutions, conducting activities, providing support to lift up the downtrodden, the mistreated, the abused living souls, and to address the needs of the abandoned, the scorned, and the forgotten.
This is our arm for love for neighbor.
• Make available, the means or modes of solutions that provide the victims with a life of dignity, and offer victims information about these different options, and supports victims’ decision-making.
• Advocate for victims within the community, the justice setting, and other settings where appropriate and network with other institutions and the communities in creating a culture of involvement in the charities of generosity (fund donations), of service (volunteerism), and of consolation (demonstrations of empathy, sympathy, and concern for action).
• Ensure access to services, activities, and other modes of spiritual nourishment for the victims.
• Provide emotional support to victims through in-person counselling, support groups, hotline, and on-call and back-up services and assist victims in addressing their traumatic responses to victimization, helping victims reach emotional and physical healing.
• Develop in the victims a sense of social responsibility so that the cycle of care for one’s neighbor is extended and the entirety of individuals aided is multiplied.
In the future, we envision to:
• Provide victims with information about the legal processes and options available to them through the civil and criminal legal systems, coordinate the support services provided through these systems, make available legal assistance, and provide victims with companions at hearings and/or trials.
• Help victims in their personal growth through access to educational opportunities, or in their financial recovery and restitution through livelihood programs, skills training, and other link-up set-ups.
• Establish and operate shelters, havens, or refuge centers essential in ministering to the concerns of the victims of abuse, oppression and neglect, where the needs may be transitory or requiring long-term remedial measures.
• Provide life-enabling interventions that may require victims to live within the shelters, havens, or refuge in the near future.centers, allow them to be non-residents, or access them through field services.
LEAN-ON: WOMEN AND CHILDREN AND OTHER PROGRAMS
Focus on the well being of women and children is the first endeavor of the LEAN-ON Ministry.
Deus Noster Foundation seeks to conduct charitable activities to shelters that are in dire need of support, such as orphanages and other homes with no regular sponsors, those with no international funding, or those with no website or social media presence.
With this, Deus Noster Foundation conducts feeding programs, Christmas outreach, and other ad hoc charity work, such as in times of natural calamities and crisis situations.
Community-Based Activities on No Violence Against Women and Children (VAWC)
Deus Noster supported the Religious of The Good Shepherd (RGS), one of its mission partners, in two of their activities in the Diocese of Virac:
Gender Sensitivity Training for Mobilization of No Violence Against Women and their Children (VAWC) Program in 2016, which was conducted in five municipalities, and;
Orientation on VAWC Law in 2017, which were community-based sessions for eight barangays.
Other Programs
The members of Deus Noster volunteer their services together with their family members in partnership with The Congregation of The Sisters of Saint John The Baptist (Baptistine Sisters). They envision this activity to become a venue for their young children to grow in an atmosphere of “living love” for neighbor.
There are also Christmas outreach programs that endeavor, not just to practice, but to spread “charity in action” with others. Our volunteers in the Christmas outreach have steadily increased since we started the program in 2016.
2016: Duyan Ni Maria, Pampanga. A shelter for abandoned children.
2017: Bahay Ni Maria, Calamba City, Laguna. A haven for abandoned elderly women.
2018: Cottolengo Filipino, Rodriguez, Rizal. A home for abandoned boys with disabilities and special needs.
2019: Casa Dei Bambini San Guiseppe Incorporated (St Joseph Children’s Home). A shelter for abandoned/ neglected children that also facilitates adoption of the children to new loving families. This outreach is especially memorable, as it was held outside of the shelter premises, as an excursion/ trip to a farm.
Taal Eruption Outreach
Deus Noster Foundation held an outreach program for the displaced children of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Children’s Home as a result of the Taal volcanic eruption in January 2020. The children were temporarily housed in a school in Pasay City where Deus Noster Foundation members visited them in February 2020.
Support for Affected by COVID-19
In solidarity with those affected by ECQ brought about by the covid-19 pandemic, Deus Noster Foundation sent donations to its partner, The Baptistine Sisters, who helped distribute the goods to the affected poor families in their area to whom they minister to every week.
Another recipient during the ECQ is the Holy Trinity Home for Children in Novaliches, Quezon City, where Deus Noster Foundation members brought donations in cash and in kind to the Sisters, The Trinitarian Handmaids of The Divine Word.
Deus Noster, in partnership with Seijo Disinfection Services, sponsored the disinfection of shelters run by the Religious of The Good Shepherd in Gen. Trias, Cavite.
A disinfection kit was also donated to the Baptistine Sisters that included a training session courtesy of Seijo Disinfection Services.