A Country of Contrast

The Philippines is made up of over 7000 islands, with Manila as the capital city. Central Manila boasts impressive skyscrapers and luxurious hotels and malls; yet just a few miles away lie a sprawling network of shanty towns, housing the city’s poorest inhabitants.

The shanty towns are constructed on and around landfill sites - the largest of these was Smokey Mountain dumpsite, which once housed over 30,000 people and was active for 40 years.

The Community at Pier 18

The closure of Smokey Mountain dumpsite in 1993 forced the majority of squatters onto the nearby Pier 18 dumpsite. Here adults and children work side by side, searching in the waste for tiny scraps of metal or plastic to sell, with families surviving on just 40p per day.

The Philippine Community Fund was set up with the aim of feeding and educating every child on the dumpsite, and today over 700 children enjoy an education in the 4 schools built by the charity.

Providing for the Future

To begin to ensure the school can sustainably receive the necessary funds to remain open, the PCF embarked on a partnership with King’s College London Students In Free Enterprise team - together the two teams taught a small group of mothers to make jewellery by hand.

Students from King’s College London taught the mothers to roll beads from recycled paper, and with the support of the PCF’s livelihood trainers and jewellery designers, a new recycling initiative was launched in a community that had previously survived on other people’s waste. A new enterprise was born that will be providing not only a sustainable income to the families involved, but support for over 700 of the poorest Filipino children cared for by the PCF’s programmes.

More information: www.p-c-f.org