Slum School
Just outside the capital city of Makassar in Southern Sulawesi is a massive dump site, which handles all of the rubbish from the city and surrounding areas. In a village right beside the dump there are around 500 people, including around 300 children. The adults and children spend at least 6 hours per day, 7 days per week, searching through the rubbish for plastic, paper, glass and metal that they can sell onto a recycling company. The parents earn around 30,000 IDR per day (around $3 USD or £2) and the children earn around 10,000 IDR ($1 USD or about 70p).
The community is living in absolute poverty, there is no social welfare system to provide any kind of basic living allowance and there is very limited health care. Most of the children are suffering from mild to severe malnutrition and since the dump came into existence 20 years ago three generations have become reliant and trapped on the dump as a way of survival.
Some families who have more recently moved to the city in search of jobs have found themselves unable to find space in the crowded village, so they are forced to live on top of the rubbish itself. It is dangerous to walk on the dump site; there are invisible bogs which can suck you down, rusty nails and rotting carcases. The bacteria breeding in the rubbish make the ground burning hot to stand on, even with wellington (rubber) boots on. We recently asked one mother where they go to give birth to the children, she looked at us confused and answered "we give birth to them right here, on top of the rubbish".
This level of poverty is something which shocks even experienced aid workers. It is hard to understand what can possibly be done to help so many people. And yet there are still things which make us smile -the pure and determined resilience of the children, their ability to play with any novel thing that they find and, most touching of all, their eagerness to study.
When the Sacred Childhoods team first visited the site in February 2010 we were amazed to find that the community had jointly funded three girls, then aged 14, to go to the nearby school on the basis that they would come back and give free classes to the rest of the children. What was even more astonishing was that these girls were totally natural and committed teachers and could manage to keep the attention of 50 children of different ages and capabilities all at once. We were totally impressed and immediately asked how we could help them.
Since then our relationship with the community has deepened. We now sponsor the three girls, allowing them a small amount of financial security each month. We have paid for the roof of the building to be fixed, painted and bought new text books and we pay for the children to have a healthy meal after class.
Because the children must continue to work on the dump site to support themselves and their families they can only attend class three times per week. And yet their reading and writing skills are equal to children of the same age in many Western schools, and their maths is also very good.
This year Sacred Childhoods will be providing extra health care, including treatments for their intestinal worms, scabies and lice and we will pay for some medical treatments when they get sick. We're also launching the micro finance scheme (see the 'lend' project page) and finding other creative ways to help without creating dependency.
