Monday, March 09, 2009

Albim Salamat, Former Smokey mountain Scavenger

Albim Salamat, 43 years old, was born in the Smokey Mountain and started to work as a scavenger when he was about 7 years old, and just stopped 30 years later. As he says, "I used to scavenge as a source to pay my studies".
It was the only way of getting money to study because "there was no timetable or shifts", and in the end of the day he could get the money to "pay the bills without having to wait for the end of the month".
Albim now works as Community Develop Worker in a program called "Out of School Youth" that consists in motivating teenagers to go back to school and try to finish theirs studies.

 




This picture is part of a series of shots taken in the Smokey Mountain, in Manila (The Philippines), which portrait the old dumpsite, the social housing and the new dumpsite.