We arrived at Rach Gia, Kien Giang at the Catalyst school. This is the school that Catalyst built 5 years ago for the children living in the garbage dump. I learned from Caroline that the garbage dump has been closed for about a year now, which means that the families living there had two choices: 1) They could stay and continue to pay rent, but were not allowed to work at the dump anymore to help pay for the rent. This meant if they stayed they had to find other work in the community somehow to pay the rent. It is very hard for these families to find work as many of them are undocumented in the sense that they do not have official papers from their ancestry. This could be because several generations ago they immigrated to the country or just because someone along the line lost the paperwork in a fire or some other way. Despite all of this, some of the families have chosen to stay at this garbage dump to be near the school so their children can continue to go to school in hopes of a better life. 2) Another option is to move to the new dump which is 30 km away from the school. This makes it much more difficult to continue to go to school. But with a Catalyst bicycle and the Catalyst scholarship money which pays for school and food for the family, some of the families have chosen this option. As always, the children have to stay in school for Catalyst to continue to pay the scholarships and provide the food. If they miss school, they are kicked out of the Catalyst program.
Very cool!
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