No free ride to Paris for disabled artists

“AFTER their initial expressions of high hopes, they ended up crying a river of tears.”

Cecile Guidote-Alvarez, director of the Dream Center and Artists for Peace of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco), was referring to the five Filipino artists with disabilities who had appealed for help from President Aquino so they could perform on the sidelines of the 21st Conference of Parties on the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP21) in Paris this week.

They had sought financial assistance or possibly a free ride on the presidential plane to France. But President Aquino left Sunday morning for the Paris conference without them, and the state-run Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. (Pagcor) turned down their request for support.

The artists belonging to the Earthsavers Dream Ensemble were set to do musical numbers at a COP21 side event, including one with Peter Yarrow of the famed US folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary.

“But that’s not going to happen anymore,” Alvarez said. She called up the Inquirer to relay the bad news on Saturday night shortly before she left for the French capital.

Malacañang “turned down our artists’ appeal to hitch a ride on the presidential plane,” she said.

“Their hopes were initially raised when they learned that the President himself had expressed an interest in helping them when he told the Presidential Management Staff (PMS) to see how the Palace could assist them,” she said.

$10-K dream

Alvarez, also the head of Earthsavers, said the PMS endorsed the artists’ letter to Pagcor, to which they appealed for financial assistance.

“They needed about $10,000 (P470,000) to make their dream of performing in Paris a reality,” she said.

Pagcor, however, turned down the artists’ request.

Maricar Bautista, Pagcor assistant vice president for corporate communications and services, said “the agency’s revenues had been allocated to the construction of thousands of classrooms in public schools nationwide, including communities devastated by Supertyphoon ‘Yolanda,’ which ravaged Eastern Visayas in late 2013.”

In a letter to Alvarez, Bautista said that “this project is a priority program of Pagcor since the agency’s primary advocacy under its incumbent management is to help improve the country’s public education sector.”

The artists had also asked the Department of Social Welfare and Development for help. But like Pagcor, the DSWD said it was not in a position to provide assistance.

No one to turn to

Social Welfare Undersecretary Angelita Gregorio-Medel explained that their “annual budget for 2015 for persons with disabilities, as well as the department’s Protective Services Program, had already been appropriated for the program requirements of the DSWD field offices.”

The artists had also sought financial aid from an undisclosed number of private companies, all to no avail.

Yarrow, meanwhile, reportedly canceled his trip to the French capital when he learned about the Filipino artists’ misfortune.

In an e-mail, he told Alvarez: “Tell them (artists) that I love them and we’ll really, really try hard to find a way to be together some time in the future.”

“We can plan a later date either in New York City or Paris,” he said.

One of the artists, Nicodemus Pahati, who has celebral palsy, earlier revealed that they had personally written President Aquino for help, saying that their group “hoped they could touch his heart.”

Pahati, who is both an actor and a writer, wrote the letter in behalf of his fellow PWDs: Rico del Rosario and Maricor Book, both blind singers; Bobby Suprales and Edna Sanchez, both dancers, and Jennifer del Rosario, the group’s production assistant.

Unesco Director General Irina Bokova had endorsed the disabled Filipinos’ participation at the UN event.

“The side event at COP21 will be a good opportunity to draw the attention of all stakeholders to the importance of disability issues and to the urgent need to mainstream them within the climate change discourse,” Bokova had said.

Unesco “welcomes your efforts to integrate PWDs fully into every aspect of social, political and economic life,” she told Earthsavers.