[SPHBHT: BT-NEWS-PAGES <BTS-030> [FIRST -30 ] ...

12/03/10] Author:KATMAN Date:17/03/10 Time:15:11

30 PROFILE/ARTS The Business Times, Friday, March 12, 2010

Using sheer wheel power

Efren Penaflorida, the ‘pushcart
educator’ who is CNN’s Hero
of the Year, remains unassuming
even as he now gets marriage
proposals on Facebook,
reports CLARISSA TAN

A
S A kid, Efren Penaflorida was bullied on
the streets of Cavite, where he grew up
next to a cemetery and a garbage dump.
Getting roughed up by gang members in a
Filipino inner-city slum is quite common;
what’s uncommon was Penaflorida’s re-
sponse.
Penaflorida decided that if you can’t
beat ’em, give ’em books. He and several friends started
bringing reading material and food to the street kids of
Cavite – first in plastic bags, then in canvas bags, then in a
pedicab and finally (when it was discovered that the tyres
of the pedicab punctured easily), by pushcart or kariton.
While in high school, he founded a company called Dy-
namic Teen that brought – or rather, wheeled – education
to children, some of who were too terrorised to attend
school.
In this way, they would divert the kids from joining
street gangs, he figured.
“I wanted to fight back. But instead of fighting back neg-
atively, I wanted to fight back positively. We would do
small yet positive things to influence other students to do
the same, instead of being involved in violence and gang
wars.”
Tough life on the streets
Gang members are recruited from as young as nine, says
Penaflorida, who is 29. “They are groomed to become fu-
ture bullies, gangsters. They are forced to steal, to beat up
other children, or to hurt themselves to prove that they
are macho. Lots of children lose their love for learning.
We went to these places to prevent this from happening.”
The simple wooden kariton is ubiquitous in the Philip-
pines, and is more often used to cart around odds and
ends or rubbish. Penaflorida’s company currently has
four karitons, which rotate the streets of Cavite in quick
succession, loaded with books, stationery, tables, chairs,
Pushing it: Penaflorida loads his ‘kariton’ with books and a blackboard and brings education to street kids
food and personal hygiene effects such as toothbrushes.
The karitons are fitted with blackboards and act as ambu-
lant classrooms. One of the karitons also functions as a
medical clinic. So far, Dynamic Teen has taught reading
and writing to some 1,500 youngsters.
“It’s hard for us to gather children, so we use food to
attract them,” says Penaflorida. “Now, they run up to the
karitons whenever they appear.”
Penaflorida and his colleagues offered their “pushcart
education” on the quiet for 12 years, until – via
word-of-mouth, a YouTube clip that showed their roving
karitons, and a lucky publicity break on Oprah’s Angel
Network – he was chosen in November last year as CNN’s
Hero of the Year. The US$100,000 prize money for his
project and the subsequent media fanfare and reception
in his home country have changed his life phenomenally.
COLLEZIONE-C2 JOAN BITAGCOL
“I went to the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles to get my
award,” he says. “The stars were just beside me – Randy
Jackson, Eva Mendes, Pierce Brosnan, Nicole Kidman,
Carrie Underwood. And of course, Anderson Cooper. That
was a great experience. I was really surprised because it
was Eva Mendes who approached me, rather than the oth-
er way round. She said: ‘Efren, where’s Efren? I want to
take photos with him.’
“I was wearing a traditional Filipino barong, with an
embroidered map of the Philippines. Randy Jackson said:
‘What’s that, dawg? I like your suit, dawg.’”
Penaflorida is now an international role model in de-
mand around the world. He was in Singapore two weeks
ago, when he gave a talk and met up with local communi-
ty leaders, under the invitation of UBS’s philanthropic
arm. He also chatted with Singapore-based Filipinos at a
local Jollibee outlet.
UBS
A real hero: Penaflorida was invited to Singapore
by UBS recently to give a talk
Back in the Philippines, with national elections loom-
ing, Penaflorida has received requests from politicians for
endorsements. “But we’re non-partisan, I would rather
use my influence to teach the voters,” he says firmly.
Penaflorida is going to use the award money to build
two learning centres – one in Cavite and one in Manila.
The learning centres will also function as halfway homes
for street waifs, he says.
Good care at halfway houses
“A lot of children sleep outside convenience stores, in the
streets, and even in open tombs, because they’re afraid to
go home without money – their parents will beat them up.
In the halfway house, they can be taken care of.”
And online – well, online, Penaflorida’s life has
well-nigh exploded.
“Before I left for LA, I had zero messages in my Inbox.
After I got back, I had 13,000 unread messages.”
Penaflorida has also long ago busted the 5,000 Friends
limit on his personal Facebook page (though you can still
join his Fan page). “I still have another 7,000 people wait-
ing to be my Friend,” he says, shaking his head in won-
der.
Among the hundreds of messages scrawled on his Face-
book Wall are some from new pals – a few males included
– offering to marry him.
What does he do with these public proposals of mar-
riage? Surely, as someone who has fought back street bul-
lies, this new assault can’t be too difficult?
“I just pray,” says Penaflorida.

The art of vandalism

By MADHVI
SUBRAHMANIAN
GIVEN Singapore’s
squeaky-clean – to the
point of being sterile – im-
age, most people would not
expect to see graffiti here,
much less graffiti art.
Notwithstanding Sing-
Post’s much derided publici-
ty stunt where its mailbox-
es were “mysteriously” de-
faced and subsequently re-
placed with “proper” graffi-
ti art, this medium has al-
ways been regarded as van-
dalism by the greater socie-
ty. Posing questions: Antz’s ‘3 Bodies of Buddha – Buddha of Healing, Amitabha Buddha, Sakyamuni, 2010’
But rather than anti-so- from the ‘Is This Home, Truly?’ show presented by Fortune Cookie Projects
cial creative outlets for mis-
Serious yet funny: (From left) Toh, Lok and Neo in ‘wo(men)’, a play scripted in fits, graffiti art has in recent Singapore make
only dialect and Singlish without the humour of the ‘Phua Chu Kang’ variety years earned greater re- their living doing
spectability, and several graphic art in graf-

The dysfunctional world

shows focusing on such fiti style for bars,
works hope to do the same businesses and pri-
in Singapore. vate commissions.
Fortune Cookie Projects They travel the

of women without men

By CHEAH UI-HOON
WOMEN often wonder –
what would men be with-
out them? Then again,
what would women be with-
out men?
A female playwright
took a down-to-earth view
of the “women without
men” situation in her new
play, wo(men), which
raised the curtain on the Na-
tional University of Singa-
pore’s (NUS) arts festival
last week.
Faith Ng’s wo(men) was
an honest play, grounded
in good writing and ap-
proached with the right
touch of brevity; which
rang true with its utterly
believable and thoroughly
Singaporean characters.
Most of us could relate
to the play’s old-fashioned
grandmother, who threat-
ened suicide to get her way,
and who used emotional
blackmail on her children.
“You want me to die is
it?” she accused her daugh-
ter, after the daughter
turned off the TV because
she had fallen asleep in
front of it.
And as Asians, all could
relate to the mother who ex-
pected home-cooked food
to soothe ruffled feathers.
wo(men) featured three
generations of women in an
HDB household – grand-
mother (Lok Meng Chue),
mother (Neo Swee Lin) and
daughter (Patricia Toh) –
and the play unfolded like a
kaleidoscope, with each
thrust and turn of the Sin-
glish dialogue giving us dif-
ferent views of their rela-
tionship, and shifting our
understanding of the char-
acters until the bigger pic-
ture.
The play opened imme-
diately with an antagonistic
scene, so that we registered
that this was a dysfunction-
al situation.
From the altercations
and accusations that fol-
lowed, the reasons for the
hurt and hate became evi-
dent, and this was the joy of
watching wo(men) – the dia-
logue kept true to how we
often communicate with
our family members: Make
snide remarks and indirect
accusations, bring up old
hurts, and avoid giving true
answers.
Ng’s writing – under the
mentorship of veteran play-
wright Huzir Sulaiman –
kept us glued to the action
unfolding on stage as it
would move towards a cer-
tain revelation and then go
off on a sudden tangent be-
fore coming back to the
original thread.
And in between all that
antagonism, with pretty
heavy stuff going on in the
characters such as mental
instability and depression,
was a lot of dark irony and
indirect hilarity.
Actress Lok delivered an
exceptional portrayal of an
unapologetically belligerent
and difficult woman; who
by her status and behav-
iour provided much of the
comic relief, but not so that
the weight of the play
would shift to her. Kudos to
director Claire Wong as
well – who steered the dra-
matic play on an even keel
so the pathos was checked.
In the end, it emerged
that the grandmother’s
mental state had been af-
fected by a superstitious be-
lief that she would never
meet her husband in the af-
terlife; the mother refused
to accept the fact that her
husband had committed su-
icide so she was constantly
waiting for him to return;
and the daughter was
dumped by her married lov-
er even though she never
thought she’d suffer the
same fate as her mother
and grandmother.
wo(men) underscored
how women need men, but
more importantly, how a
play can be scripted in only
dialect and Singapore Eng-
lish without the humour of
the Phua Chu Kang variety.
in Tanjong Pagar Distri-
park presents two shows re-
lated to graffiti art. Daze in
Singapore showcases
works by the famed New
York-based graffiti artist
called Daze (real name:
Chris Ellis) and Is This
Home, Truly? highlights six
Singaporean graffiti artists.
In the latter, the artists take
lyrics from a National Day
song and turn them around
to pose a number of ques-
tions concerning public art
and socio-political art in
Singapore.
Graffiti art today finds it-
self in the gallery space and
while this may seem like a
paradox, graffiti artists
themselves embrace this
new venue. They believe it
creates greater awareness
and acceptance of their art
form into the mainstream,
taking it away from the neg-
ative connotation of “van-
dalism”.
Since its inception in
New York City, where graffi-
ti art gained momentum in
the 1970s, the art form has
evolved a great deal. Initial-
ly, graffiti was used primari-
ly by political activists to
make statements and by
street gangs to mark territo-
ry. Soon, the idea became
widespread and competi-
tive. “Writing”, as this
spray painting form is
called, spread from the
streets to the subway and
the goal among the youth
became to have as many
“tags” (signatures) as possi-
ble without being caught.
All the work was typical-
ly done at night and execut-
ed rather quickly – this con-
cept and method was com-
Striking imagery: ‘Aerial View of the Tropics, 2010’ by
Daze (above left), from the show presented by Fortune
Cookie Projects, depicts the Singapore landscape;
‘Mental Block’, an artwork by Zero (above right)
monly referred to as “bomb-
ing”. By the early 1980s
there were thousands of
people bombing clandes-
tinely all over NYC. Writers
enhanced their tags with de-
signs, to differentiate them-
selves for visual appeal and
deeper meaning.
“A large number of
these people were serious
artists – they maintained
sketch books, planned their
work and location before-
hand, and worked in
well-coordinated groups
called crews at night,” ex-
plains Mary Dinaburg, di-
rector of Fortune Cookie
Projects.
Among the serious graffi-
ti artists in Singapore is Ze-
ro (Zulkarnaen Othman) – a
graduate from Nanyang
Academy of Fine Arts who
has spent more than a dec-
ade on the local graffiti art
scene. While he started off
as an underground artist,
he soon became actively in-
volved in changing graffiti’s
image from an act of vandal-
ism to a proper art form
that has made its way into
local museums, galleries,
schools and businesses.
In 2005, due to the ef-
forts of artists like Zero, the
walls at the skate parks
such as at Orchard Road,
next to the Somerset MRT
station, became designated
spaces for graffiti art.
Much to the disappoint-
ment of artists, however,
what started as a truly free
space today requires appli-
cations and proposals be-
fore it can be used.
“Although this gives
some voice to this form of
expression, it is definitely
very restrictive and takes
away from the idea of doing
real graffiti art,” says Antz
(Anthony Chong), another
Singaporean graffiti artist.
“Last year my friends
and I wanted to do graffiti
art work in support of the
students dying in the Gaza
bombings – we just wanted
to show solidarity and em-
pathy but were not given
permission,” says Zero.
“Street art has to engage
people and can carry social
messages, but in Singapore
we need to be more sophis-
ticated and subtle, express
ourselves in a way that is
not offensive to anyone,” la-
ments Zero.
However, many coun-
tries admire Singapore’s ap-
proach to this illicit art
form. While heavy penal-
ties here act as a deterrent,
specially allocated spaces
allow artists some form of
individual expression.
For over 30 years, this
art form has survived,
thrived and evolved; it has
gained recognition from
Sao Paolo to Jakarta. Today
artists like Zero and Antz in
world displaying
their art, partici-
pate in live demon-
strations of graffiti
art and give work-
shops.
Although Singa-
pore may have its
own unique and
somewhat contro-
versial approach
to graffiti art there
is no denying that
this art form of
“vandalism” has
evolved, reinvent-
ed and slowly
seeped into the main-
stream.
For Graffiti art visit:
Space at Youth Skate
Park, National Youth
Council
Skate park near
Somerset MRT
Antz and Zero at Haji
Lane, Arab Street
Live art demonstration,
March 20, 2010 at 8pm
8Q at SAM
8 Queen Street
Live art demonstrations,
March 20, 2010 at 7pm
Fortune Cookie Projects:
Daze in Singapore – over
30 works by the New
York-based artist for show
and sale
‘Is This Home, Truly?’
Curated by Zaki Razak
and Zul Othman
Works by six Singaporean
artists for show and sale
Open from Wed to Sun
12noon to 6pm
Tel: 93821700 for
appointment