help the children of ulingan

A few months ago, together with some fellow bloggers, we visited "happy land" and my heart was broken seeing the plight of those unfortunate kids who had to make a living scavenging from garbage and exposed to the deadly fumes of ulingan.

Sitio Ulingan is a temporary resettlement area of the people from Smokey Mountain (Manila's old dumpsite), which is now home to a small community. The "ulingan people" are making a living making charcoals aside from scavenging garbage from nearby dump sites to make ends meet. 

"Sitio Ulingan defines poverty in a novel way. No one can ever know what real poverty is until one takes a glimpse into the everyday life of the Ulingan people." - Dennis Villegas

It is really heartbreaking to see the kids working at the charcoal pit instead of playing.  Thankfully, there is someone like Melissa Villa-Wilcox who co-founded Project PEARLS with her daughter to help alleviate the lives of underprivileged children in the Philippines.

Project PEARLS is a registered non-profit organization in the State of California. Its mission is to help underprivileged children in the Philippines to have a better life by giving them PEARLS: PEACE. EDUCATION. ASPIRATION. RESPECT. LOVE. SMILE.

And they have been doing a great job helping the kids at Ulingan.About 2 months ago they had their first Ulingan outreach program with Photo Kalye and distributed goods to the kids.  To show how amazing this group, they had another outreach program 2 weeks after that and gave boots to the kids. And just recently Project PEARLS had another outreach program at Ulingan and i believe that Ms. Melissa is planning to build a better daycare center for the kids of Ulingan!!! woot! woot!

"She has big dreams for the children of Ulingan. But this special lady knows how to make her dreams reality.
Congrats Melissa for the wonderful job you do together with your volunteers and PhotoKalye." - Sidney Snoeck

You can help too and make this dream a reality.  Please support or give donation to Project PEARLS. You can join their page on facebook here. or give your donations here.