Mome reads Mommy, My daughter's way to spell it when she was younger... It stuck. My son calls me Mome... just like it looks. I now sign all my notes to them "Love, Mome". It's our inside secret and makes them smile. I always want them to smile.

Saturday, November 22, 2008

Everyone Deserves a Christmas


I came across a heartbreaking story while surfing today. It's something I can not even fathom encountering in my life time, and yet it is real for these poor children and their families in the Philippines.

A local landfill in Payatas. known as Smokey Mountain, is daily inhabited by children as young as four, who are working with their families to find anything of value that they can sell to provide food for the family. The enormity of this crisis for food can be depicted by 200 lives being claimed when, after extensive rainfall, a trashslide occurred at the dump, many of the lives were of children.

The landfill in Payatas, The Philippines, is notoriously known the world over as Smokey Mountain. For over 35 years, the smoking dump site has grown to become a stark and heart-tugging reminder of the desperate onditions of humanity.

On a daily basis, children pick through newly arrived garbage to collect material to sell. The earnings made by one child are not enough to even buy food for the day. Hence, entire families are forced to climb the mountain each day, hoping to earn enough to feed everyone. Children as young as four years old are forced to work in this daily struggle for survival.

In response to the plight of these children, Totedaddy.com is working with Lighthouse Center For Children Foundation to bring a little cheer to the children this Christmas.

Totedaddy.com has kicked off with a cash sponsorship of USD 10,000 to enable the children to celebrate Christmas. FusionExcel International has also pitched in a USD 5,000 in cash sponsorship. The money raised will help fund the projects already in place, and help fund additional projects aimed at providing better housing, and a means of livelihood for the Payatas community.

It is hoped that by creating better awareness to the plight of these children, more support can be garnered towards their betterment. Together we can bury poverty!

If this story tugs at your heart strings as it did mine, stop in at Christmas For Payatas to find out more about the plight of the children and to make a donation.

Everyone deserves a Christmas. Let's work together to make it happen.

2 comments:

  1. Oh yes, I've seen this with my own two eyes and I was just devastated. It was during my senior year in High School in 1998 and we visited a Smokey Mountain but in the southern part of the Philippines. I tried to hold back tears and my stomach turned upside down when I saw kids eating rotten eggs. Yup, you read it right. Philippines is a country of extremes: the richness of the elite and the severe poorness of the very poor.

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  2. no one deserves to have to live like thtt

    i give at least £5000 a year of my yearly earnings to children in need

    i just hope that it helps

    £5000 is not a sufficient ammount to do much but i have been doing it for the past 39 years

    and i am hoping one day that there will just be a day when everyone is happy

    EVERYONE DESERVES A CHRISTMAS

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