Expansion Linkages and Others The VACC expanded its services to victims overseas in Singapore, Hongkong and Dubai.

It opened in 2006 an official VACC chapter in Singapore in the aftermath of two cases in Singapore involving OFWs that the VACC assisted: the Jane La: Puebla "chop-chop lady" murder case in Singapore involving another OFW as suspect, and the case of Sharon Pino, the case of a domestic helper who allegedly fell to hear death from a high-rise building in Singapore. The VACC officers traveled to Singapore to attend the hearings of the La Puebla case in its own efforts to help avoid our bad experience with the f1or Contemplacion case. The VACC through Mr. Jimenez coordinated with the Philippine Con8ulate in Dubai in the Middle East in 2006 where he met with the OFWs on how to assist those who may have been victims of illegal recruitment, rape and other abuses. Locally, it opened this year new chapters in Cavite, La Union, Ilocos Norte-and Agusan del Sur in Mindanao. Meanwhile, it forged links with other organizations and agencies to strengthen its programs and advocacy. In another trailblazing move, it signed a MOA on February 9, 2006 in Malacafiang with the Presidential Anti-Graft Commission (P AGC) assisting volunteer NGO in the agency's "4festyle Check." Earlier in December 2005, the V ACC signed a MOA with the Philippine National Police and the private firm Genertex to promote the project "Reklamo Wanted" that facilitates the tracking down of wanted persons and other fugitives of the law through a coordinated system of information networking, the use of text messaging and the Internet. The killing this year of Julia Campbell, US Peace Corps volunteers to the Philippines, has outraged and touched a chord in the heart of VACC victims. VACC Founding Chairman Dante La Jimenez and President Martin Dino presented a Posthumous Award to Julia Campbell... "to remember Julia is to remember her greatness of spirit as she brought sunshine to the desolate villages of Bicol with her pure heart and winning ways; who inflamed the heart of the Filipino people with her courage." The award was received by Mr. Karl Beck, Country Director of the US Peace Corps to the Philippines on April 23, 2007 in Pasay City.