A Housing Alternative To Living In Quezon City's 7-Story Garbage Dump

In July of 2000 a typhoon hit Quezon City in the Philippines, triggering the avalanche of a mammoth 'garbage mountain' that buried over 2000 people.

"The disaster site is allegedly 'closed' now, but the heaping landscape of the greater dump itself is still home to roughly 30,000 inhabitants who burrow in and around what is perhaps the biggest piece of garbage architecture in the world. This hyperexcavated mound (climbing seven stories high in some places) provides income for close to 150,000 Philippinos who scavenge Manila's 7,500 tons of household waste collected and dumped there each day.

...Gawad Kalinga is quickly becoming an international NGO that originally began as a local movement in the Philippines, aimed at eradicating poverty by building villages and communities with squatters all over the country ...the organization has been so successful that the United Nations is studying the model to integrate into their poverty elimination programs. Meanwhile, Moleto is exporting it to other dire regions by assisting community groups in Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, India, Cambodia and South Africa."