Instead of kicking a brightly colored plastic ball to her friends during recess, five-year-old Rosita kicks broken bottles at football-sized rats while her mother scavenges in the Guatemala City garbage dump. The only lesson Rosita will learn today is how to search through rotting garbage for shards of metal and glass to recycle – or for scraps of food that might lessen her piercing pains of hunger.

  
The United Nations estimates that between 35 – 45 % of the Central American population live in gross poverty and extreme want. Dumpsites and hillsides are crawling with tens of thousands of squatters who put up dwellings of plastic and cardboard trying to eke out some measure of life. These primitive camps without electricity, sewers, or clean water exist along expressway roads and in the midst of cities.  

“Poverty is everyone’s concern…not just because there is a moral imperative to help others find dignity and peace…but [because] we are a single human family.”   UN Secretary General Kofi Annan

Thousands of men, women, and children scavenge DAILY in Central American garbage dumps, and in garbage dumps in many other developing countries  all over the world like in the philippines, Cambodia and Sierra Leone.