Along the capital’s ramshackle railways children duck into makeshift huts of corrugated iron and salvaged tarpaulin. It’s a living nightmare. Penniless and starving, most sleep outside McDonalds or in shop doorways. Many sniff glue. ‘’When my mother died I went to the street. I’m begging and selling anything to have money. I don’t have a job. I don’t have food’’. Escaping abuse at home, or orphaned, they are also harassed by locals and neglected by the government as an eyesore to Manila’s campaign against poverty. But The Dutch Foundation Emergency Help has opened a shelter for a few lucky street children, and hopes to expand – if they can get the money. ‘’They are expensive actually… In order to manage it I just give some money from my own pocket’’. A fish-farm is one of the ways the shelter funds itself – there is no help from the government. In a country so keen to tackle poverty, it has fallen to a few caring people to make the difference.

Produced by Jan Peter Lahpor