The children have already performed at art show openings, prestigious Philippine universities and even for Manila households at Christmas AFP/JAM STA ROSAMANILA: The dozen children stared shyly at the audience but grew bolder when they began to sing, pouring their grief into music for the fathers they lost to the Philippines' drug war.
The children are from a town on the outskirts of Manila that sprouted up decades ago around a sprawling trash dump where scavenging is the local industry AFP/JAM STA ROSA When the drug war started, Pilario and others locally rushed in to help families cover the costs of the spate of funerals - there were some 100 killings in under a year.
The goal is to keep the children in school and on the path toward a career, and away from the local traps of trash picking and small-time drug dealing that ensnared their fathers.