Libro ni Loren Foundation
It all started with a 12-year-old boy named Joseph Bosito who was a child miner in the gold mining community of Paracale, Camarines Norte. He was featured in Loren’s monthly documentary aired over ABS-CBN in May 1999. The documentary exposed the plight of the country’s child laborers in an episode entitled "Mga Batang Trabahador".
Joseph was one of the 3.7 million batang trabahador in the country. He used to engage in a crude type of mining called "compression mining", where he would dive up to thirty (30) feet in a narrowly-dug hole filled with murky water, staying in this 'zero visibility' pit for hours, with only a pair of goggles to protect his eyes, cotton balls to protect his ears from air pressure, and a tube connected to a compressor that generates unsafe air as his oxygen source. All these he had to bear for a measly pay.
Joseph’s story touched the heart of Loren and several benefactors who wanted to help in sending the boy and those like him back to school, so that they would stop working in the dangerous mines. Hence, Libro ni Loren Foundation was organized later that year.
Under the Balik-Eskwela Program of the Foundation, Joseph and the other child-miners were able to go back to school where they were given the opportunity to mold their lives, characters and future. Joseph is now in college and devotes all his attention to his studies, hoping to become an engineer someday.
Apart from this scholarship program, Libro ni Loren also aims to help improve the literacy level in the Philippines’ poorest provinces through its Book Donation Program where general reference books, textbooks, dictionaries and other reading materials are donated to public libraries nationwide.
