Social Welfare and Development Secretary Corazon Juliano-Soliman together with presidential sisters, Ms. Pinky Aquino-Abellada and Ms. Ballsy Aquino-Cruz joyfully give gifts to streetchildren who participated and performed dance numbers during the grand Christmas party for streetchildren held recently at the Liwasang Aurora, Quezon City Memorial Circle.

More than 4,000 streetchildren coming from 15 local government units in Metro Manila participated in the whole-day, fun-filled event with gift giving, games, dancing, storytelling, arts and crafts.

Also present during the activity were: Quezon City Mayor Herbert Bautista, Quezon City Vice-Mayor Joy Belmonte, Mr. Dingdong Dantes, Ms. Marian Rivera, and DSWD Undersecretary Alicia R. Bala.

The grand Christmas party culminated the series of activities for the “Paskong Ligtas sa Batang Kalye” project  which aimed to prevent children from caroling and begging along major thoroughfares and roads.

“The Christmas project is part of the Comprehensive Program for Street Families and Children which  is a long term solution to address the needs of home-based street families and homeless street families. Components of the program are: development of income-generating opportunities to prevent them from selling on the streets; conduct of literacy and formative activities for  children to keep them out of the streets; implementation of the Balik-Probinsiya Program for homeless street families so that they can go back to their provinces or places of origin; and provision of in-city and near city shelter assistance. ### (DSWD-Social Marketing Service) December 23, 2010.