Human Interest Stories

In this season of graduation, it would be normal to see waves of people in black togas throwing their caps in the air. This speaks of a celebration of reaching a new milestone. Out-of-school learner Franuel Follosco, 24, has found satisfaction in simply being a mere spectator to this time of festivity—for three times now. …

For 22-year-old Diane Besino Alberto, life never went around the way she had expected it to. Diane had to stop schooling at the age of 16 because of financial problems within the family. She had to constantly transfer households between her separated mother and father, with the former get into a new marriage,  and the…

When his father died at the age of 9, Omar Sharif “Qoy” Mohammad felt as if the world had ended. He lost the very source of his strength, and most importantly, he lost confidence in himself. After that, everything else around him started to fall apart: he quit school intermittently, went into vices, and detached…

Joshua Labra was only 16 years old when he decided to quit school and work instead to support his four younger sisters in their education. Living off only with the income from his mother who worked part-time as a laundry woman and his stepfather who worked as a jeepney driver, Joshua knew, being the eldest,…

He looked at the sky, trying to count the times he has been involved in a trouble: “It has been more than one hundred times,” he said. Bensar Tan was only 13 years old, on his first few months as a high school student, when he was recruited in a gang. As a sign of…