Occasional actor and Quezon City Rep. Alfred Vargas recently launched PWeDe!, a program that focuses on supporting PWD (persons with disabilities) livelihood centers and providing wheelchairs and hearing aids to those with special needs.
Senior graduating students with disabilities can also be granted financial aid through Vargas’ “Pantawid Graduation” program, while skills development and leadership training for both young and old will be organized by the third-termer legislator.
“It’s time to empower PWDs who have long suffered from neglect. WithPWeDe!, we wanted to give our PWDs a chance to have their own source livelihood, finish school, and have better lives,” Vargas said during an online event.
Vargas’ life-long advocacy for PWDs was rooted in his early awareness of the difficulties they go through on a daily basis. His grandmother had her legs amputated due to bone cancer when he was eight years old.
“Losing her leg changed my lola’s life. From being a vibrant and active person, she suddenly had limited mobility and was confined to a wheelchair until the last days of her life. Seeing my lola’s ordeal planted the seed of this advocacy of mine long ago,” Vargas recalled.
Inspired to make life better for PWDs like his grandmother, Vargas collected tabs of soda cans in school for donation to a non-profit group that makes wheelchairs. As an actor, he also looked out for the welfare of entertainment industry workers with disabilities.
On his first term as councilor in 2011, Vargas filed an ordinance establishing a Persons with Disabilities Affairs Office (PDAO) in Quezon City. The ordinance was swiftly passed with the support of the city council, making Quezon City one the first local government units in the country to have an office dedicated to PWDs.
Vargas continues his advocacy for PWDs in the House of Representatives. Among the bills he has already filed are HB 1393(An Act Expanding the Benefits and Privileges of Persons with Disabilities), HB 2017 (An Act Mandating the Provision of Exclusive Parking Space for Persons with Disability and Penalizing Unauthorized Use Thereof), HB 3489 (An Act Providing for Accessibility to Built Environment, to Transportation, Information and Communications Technology and to Other Facilities and Services Open or Provided to the Public for Persons with Disabilities), and HB 4021 (An Act to Provide Persons with Disabilities with Online Volunteerism Opportunities).
PWeDe! was launched on Aug. 22, which coincides with the birthday of Vargas’ mother, Atty. Susana D. Vargas, who succumbed to cancer in 2014.