Surviving on a garbage dump
On the large, urban rubbish dump on the outskirts of Ulaanbaatar, a few hundred poverty-stricken children and adults try to survive by extracting usable items and materials from the rubbish heap and sell them for a few pennies. Dick Wittenberg wrote the following about this in the NRC Weekblad in 2009:
‘The rubbish dump was a gigantic mountain. A road circled up that mountain. Trucks continuously transported waste over it. Hundreds of people crowded on that mountain. Like dung beetles. Aiming for what was still usable from each load: iron, glass, cardboard. It was scorching hot and yet most of the people were heavily dressed, with only their faces uncovered. To protect against vermin. It was teeming with insects.’
The stench on the rubbish dump is unbearable; rotting offal almost always gives it a cadaver smell. As soon as the driver begins to tip the bed of his truck, men, women and children rush forward to be the first to pull something useful from the pile of rubbish. Many serious accidents have already happened. Children who were not careful or who were pushed and stumbled, ended up under the crashing rubbish and suffocated before they could be rescued. The Steppekinderen foundation is looking for ways to improve the fate of the children on this rubbish dump.
Help underprivileged children in Mongolia
Since 2006, the foundation tries to improve the situation of the children in Mongolia each year. Thanks to donations and collection campaigns, we have built 26 gers (living shelters).
Even a relatively small amount of money can do a lot, because in Mongolia, where many herders earn barely twenty euros a month, your money is worth more than five times that!
Thank you to all who support our small but important work!