|
Smokey Mountains
Smokey Mountain is a 500-foot-high garbage dump spread over more than 15
acres in the coastal Manila slum of Tondo. Flames, fueled by the methane gas from an unending process of spontaneous combustion,
sometimes leap out five feet into the air, and swirls of pungent, black smoke perpetually seep out of the giant tangle of
torn plastic, broken glass, rotten food, rusting metal, and other unidentifiable junk. The ground is springy, like an Irish
peat bog, and extremely hot on the feet.
Hundreds of children as young as three or four, wearing threadbare shorts
and rubber sandals, wade around alone on the slippery slopes, probing the pile with handmade, short metal hooks to find scraps
of plastic, bottles, wood, and bits of electrical wire. The older children wear knee-length rubber boots, torn cotton gloves,
and long drab scarves wrapped around their heads, as they chase incoming trucks at the peak of the mountain to sift through
the offal before it is pushed to the edge by one of the three great yellow bulldozers that rumble back and forth like army
tanks on maneuver.
Smokey Mountain is one of six municipal dumps for this burgeoning capital
of 13 million people. Each month, Manila generates more than 100,000 cubic yards of trash. But community organizers say that
the problem is not the garbage. It is the chronic poverty that, by government estimates, leaves more than 60 percent of the
population below subsistence levels. Most of the people in the two squatter communities on the slopes of Smokey Mountain come
from rural areas, where deepening poverty and a simmering armed insurgency combine to drive people into the relative security
of the city.
WHO SUFFERS?
While adverse environmental change has negative repercussions on the entire
citizenry, it has its most severe impact on the lives of the poor. Poor people are often the most vulnerable to environmental
disturbance since their low income means they are less able to save and accumulate assets. Moreover, since poor people are
also oftentimes powerless, they usually fail to build social networks, avail of credit facilities, and access social and other
forms of formal assistance. These limitations restrict their capacity to cope with adverse impacts of environmental risks
and disasters. These adverse impacts include decline in socio-economic well-being including the lost properties and lives,
physical isolation, population displacement, and cultural disintegration including the lost of indigenous knowledge systems
that contribute to further environmental degradation.
|
|
Mission Statement
WAKE is a non-profit group and is dedicated to making the voices of Smokey
Mountain’s women heard! Many are concerned only about the dyning environment but we are concerned about the dying environment
and the dyning people!
WAKE’s is committed to providing an international
web information resource that educates and informs individuals about the environmental hazards at the ground level of Smokey
Mountain. WAKE is comprised of five components that are the foundation of our organization:
-
We will provide data, images and analysis of the
current environmental conditions and hazards at Smokey Mountain
-
List web links to other international organizations
that contribute time, energy, and effort to assisting those in need at Smokey Mountain.
-
Draw awareness to the methods for change that
have been created and implemented by the inhabitants at Smokey Mountain. We believe that only they know the life conditions,
the needs and the hazards that plague this area. WAKE wants to identify Smokey Mountain’s people as the experts and
use their techniques as possible ways to changing living conditions
-
Look at the Western Three R’s model of Recycle,
Reduce, Reuse. From this model we will like to look at how this model can be revised and used to better the lives of those
in Smokey Mountain.
-
Reflect on feminists perspectives regarding the
environment. We will also analyze and reveal the lives and hardships of women at Smokey Mountain
|
