Your day begins at 5am. The heat is blistering, your face is close to the rotting rubbish as you search for the items you need to sell to the recycling shop, the ground moves with maggots.

After ten hours of work you have made just 50 pence. You walk back to your home on the rubbish dump which is made from old pieces of wood, cardboard and sheets of metal. There are eight of you sharing a space the size of a garden shed with no running water, toilets, electricity, beds or furniture and, when it rains, the roof leaks.

You have to work to help your parents buy food for the family but, every night, you are still hungry because there is never enough food to go around.

You dream of going to school and having the chance to change your bleak future. 
This is the daily reality for hundreds of children working on Smokey Mountain rubbish dump in the Philippines.

Help at hand

The Philippine Community Fund (PCF) works with children and their families living on Smokey Mountain rubbish dump and in a cemetery in Navotas. There are two schools, providing education, breakfast and lunch and a weekly food parcel, medical care, uniform and shoes and transport to school.
How did the Fund start?

PCF began in 1996 when the founder, a British single mum called Jane Walker, went on holiday in the Philippines and took a wrong turning. She saw hundreds of children, some as young as three, working on the huge rubbish dump called Smokey Mountain. She asked lots of questions and discovered that the parents longed for their children to go to school but they could not afford the school uniform, lunch or transport to send them. Jane started PCF’s first school in 2002 educating 180 children, a figure which has risen to 800.
Where do the crisp packets come into this?

PCF has taught the poorest parents of its school children how to make products from crisp packets, toothpaste tubes and glossy magazines. In four years’ time, when Mary Joy and her school friends graduate from school, they will either be sponsored into college or can earn a good wage making handbags and jewellery.  

How can I help?

If you want to get involved you can collect your empty crisp packets, toothpaste tubes (not the pump action type) or canned drink ring pulls. (Ask your parents, guardians, or school teacher first.) You don’t need to clean the packets or tubes, just gather them together and when you have enough to fill an A4 size envelope ask an adult to contact PCF (see below) to find out where to send them. Then your rubbish will be made into handbags by parents, earning them a good wage and providing education for the hundreds of children living and working 
on Smokey Mountain, like Mary Joy.

Mary Joy’s story

MARY Joy is one of the school’s students. She is 
12 years old and has eight brothers and sisters. When she joined the school three years ago, she was five years behind in her schooling as she had worked as a waste picker from the age of three to nine years old. 


Mary Joy says: 

“When I was working on the rubbish dump I found seven old torn story books and, even though I was unable to read them, they were my most treasured possessions. I am so lucky to be going to school. I do not have to work because PCF provides breakfast, lunch and a food parcel I can share with my family, so there is no need for me to earn money for food. PCF has made my dreams come true. I am working very hard so that I can get a good job and help my family.”