THE word labang in the dialect means “to cross.” For Fr. Carmelo Diola, it is a kind of crossover, and it is an acronym for Lahat Bangon (everyone rise), a community-based drug rehabilitation program that is catering to drug addicts who surrendered in the recent government drive, Operation Tokhang. The program is an advocacy of the Dilaab Foundation.
Fr. Diola is the executive director of Dilaab which provides pastoral accompaniment to people so they can do the right thing. It is an advocacy group that partners with bishops, and in Cebu, Fr. Diola partners with Archbishop Jose S. Palma. What the archbishop says, Fr. Diola does. Dilaab has a training center, the San Jose Training Center for Empowerment, where the center’s staff and “working students live and the people we (Dilaab) accompany receive training.” It recently had a farmers’ training program for urban agriculture under Dr. Romulo Davide.
And during election season, Dilaab addresses the youth in evangelizing politics with a campaign against vote buying.
For drug dependents, it has come up with Labang, to help the drug users who surrendered in Operation Tokhang—there are so many of them and not enough drug rehabilitation centers in the city.
For this program, Dilaab has partnered with Ubas (Ugnayan ng Barangay at Mga Simbahan), a local government program that puts together priests, barangay officers and the police in order to serve the community better.
Labang is a six-month rehabilitation program which starts with the assessment of the drug user. Among the program’s modules are personal counseling, hygiene, family therapy and alternative learning systems which are done during the day, from 9 a.m to 3 p.m. Evenings are devoted to narcotics anonymous and lectio divina or bible sharing.
Labang started Sept. 1 with 40 drug dependents, mostly poor “who cannot afford cell phones.” Today, Fr. Diola says there are around 50 of them. It is based in Subangdaku, Mandaue City, Cebu under the capable leadership of barangay captain Ernie Manatad, without whom this program would not have gotten off the ground.
Labang, says Fr. Diola, has three basic principles. The first principle is that connection is the opposite of addiction, to provide hope for the addict. The second principle is pastoral companionship. Accompanying the user in his journey is a long-term commitment of the program. And the third principle is the premise that before ”people get hooked on drugs, they already experienced a brokenness—whether financial, psychological, emotional, spiritual.” And a crucial part of the solution is to mend that brokenness and to connect again to one’s Creator, for as Fr. Diola quotes St. Augustine, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in You.”
For Labang, a drug addict is a diseased person who has to be rehabilitated to wellness, not a heinous criminal to be shot dead.
