A family fosters a dump site girl

by Helena Claire F. Arong
Center Coordinator

A visit had made a difference to a child's life. Initially, the VFV staff was reluctant to the idea that the city dump site was part of the itinerary for the volunteers. We don't want the children to look like display for pity, but we decided it's for these volunteers to know that there are children who need support, love and understanding aside from the street children on the other parts of the city. What we want to see in these children is hope. Hope that someday a chance will come their way and change their lives.

Because the world never ran out of kind–hearted people, Nene had her chance to live a different life.

Nene (center) with her friends at the dumpsite.

Nene is a ten–year old girl who has seen the world differently from other children. At an early age her memory of survival, sadness and fun revolves around the place where no children has the right to be, the city dump site.

At the age of six Nene's mother died giving birth to her youngest sister. The death of her mother made an awful turn of events in her life and siblings as well. She stopped going to school the year her mother died and lived with her grandmother. To augment their grandmother's income, Nene along with her brothers helped by scavenging at the dump site. Everyday, they would wait for the garbage truck to unload its garbages and join the older scavengers and children to hunt recyclable materials to which at the later part of the day they would sell it to the junk dealer.

A day–effort of scavenging was not worth the money they get from selling junks. Thirty to fifty pesos or less than a dollar in a day and lesser when the day is bad. To Nene and her siblings it was no longer unusual to have two meals in a day, that is lunch and dinner, from their earning. If, only if there are still left over from their dinner do they get to eat breakfast.

Subsequential to the site visit last July 2005, VFV facilitated the fostering of Nene with the help of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD). By November 2005, she had already become part of the Delgado family, she was welcomed like one of their own.

Not out of pity but of hope, one can make a difference to a child's life. The Delgados made it possible for Nene.

Raquel Mondragon, who is fondly called as Nene has become a picture of hope to everyone, and to other children who think that the garbage dump site is the only place of survival.