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Charcoal Kids

A young girl listens to imaginary headphones as children pry nails from old wood to earn money for school.

Ulingan is a small squatter community in Vitas, Tondo Manila located near the North Harbor where the Manila Bay and the Pasig River meet. The workers of Ulingan, called Ulingeros, rely on the charcoal industry for their daily bread: they work here as wood burners and charcoal packers. The average income per day, however, is way below the minimum wage standards in the Philippines. Many of the workers in Ulingan are small children. Some are teenagers and many as young as six or seven. Unable to attend school because of poverty. They work and play in thick toxic smoke, dragging soggy scraps of wood to burn and scavenge for nails and other bits for pesos. Estimates suggest 60 per cent of the population has tuberculosis while other lung problems, due to the ever-present smoke, and water-borne diseases are commonplace. Ulingan is riddled with rotting food, clothes, magazines, stuffed animals, dangerous wires and sharp metals, and anything else imaginable. Groups of children scour areas of ash and soot searching for lucrative metal left exposed by continual burn off. Makeshift shelters constructed from tarpaulin and plastic are strewn across the the landscape.