To mark the 56th year of Heart of Mary Villa, sisters and staff hold a sportsfest on February 8, feast of the Heart of Mary.
The sportsfest began with a parade at the 1043 grounds in Quezon City participated in by blue (The Banana) and green (The Untouchables) teams composed of social workers, maintenance staff, sisters of HMV, volunteers and staff of its outreach program -- the Damayan Community Center.
The fun day included cheering competition, basketball, volleyball and board games.
The Good Shepherd’s special and unique ministry for expectant mothers began in March 1953 in a rented house just across the road from their Quezon City convent on Aurora Boulevard.
The place was called "Charter House" simply because it was owned by the Charter family, and the name stuck through the years that the Sisters conducted their ministry there.
The home was an immediate response to the plight of young girls who suddenly found themselves in a dire situation to which they had no solution – being pregnant out of wedlock, and alone. For such girls in that period, it was like being lost in a deep and dark abyss or tunnel. Their heartbreak and misery called out to the caring and compassionate heart of the Good Shepherd.
A bigger place was offered by then Archbishop of Manila Rufino Cardinal Santos in Malabon.
After the blessing of Heart of Mary Villa on May 2, 1957, the next welcome news was the appointment of Mother Mary Eucharista Hickey as the first Superior of the community, which also included Srs. Elizabeth O’Dowd (American), Mary John Toomey (Irish), Eileen Morrisroe (American) and Teresa de Joya (Filipina). Mother M. Eucharista was installed a month later, on June 3 by Archbishop Santos.
Five decades of mothers and babies sheltered and cared for by the Heart of Mary Villa look to the compound in Maysilo, Malabon as the home in which they experienced welcome, compassion and genuine concern at what might well have been the darkest moments in their lives.
The grounds were not always such a paradise, though, as Malabon has always suffered from flooding during the rainy season and high tides. For all of its years in Malabon, the HMV Community endured the seasonal yet regular visits of floodwaters – and might have continued to do so for more years had not Mother Nature herself occasioned the search for a new home for the mothers and babies of the Villa.
The onslaught and fury of Typhoon Ondoy (Ketsana) in September 2009 did not spare the Heart of Mary Villa. As most of the building and facilities sustained much damage, the babies had to be moved out.
They found a safe haven, though temporary, at the Good Shepherd Formation House within the convent compound Quezon City. A temporary nursery was set up and the babies transferred on October 16, 2009.
More than 50 years of existence of Heart of Mary Villa represents invaluable experience both in the spiritual and religious sense as well as in social work practice. It has involved thousands of lives: the mothers, the babies, now grown up and having families of their own, the adopting couples, the staff of foreign and local adoptive agencies, the sisters and social workers who cared for and counseled the young mothers, the nursery caregivers who nurtured the infants and foster families who cared for some of the children awaiting placement and of course our generous benefactors and the charitable institutions who have helped as continue this work all these years.