Street roots., December 07, 2012, Page 10, Image 10

Street roots,
D ec. 7, 2012
Children play in
a toy boat they
constructed out
o f debris in the
Philippines.
R E U T E R S /D A R R E N
W H IT E S ID E
Polluted
playgrounds
Photographers document the striking
conditions in which impoverished
children o f the world play
hildren will resiliently find places to play, even if the
locations are heavily polluted. This is a daily reality for
millions of children living in poverty around the world.
For kids growing up in the slums of Jakarta, their local
swimming pools are polluted rivers swamped with floating food
containers, animal carcasses and dirty water. In dump sites in the
Philippines, little girls construct make shift playhouses out of waste
iron. For others looking for toys, they have to sweep the slums and
garbage dumps in Pakistan and India. But these filthy playgrounds
are also nurseries for a host of diseases, from cholera to malaria
and tuberculosis. Here are part of a collection of photos by multiple
photographers showing the environments many youth around the
world have as a playground.
R E U T E R S /E N N Y N U R A H E N I
Children living at a dump site play in a toy house they constructed out o f debris in Tondo, Metro M anila,
Indonesia.
R E U T E R S /A D N A N A B ID I
A boy jumps off a derelict boat in the former Aral Sea port o f Aralsk in Kazakhstan. Lower right, a boy swims in
polluted water to beat the heat in the western Yemeni city of Hajja. Upper right, a boy looks on as he collects
recyclable materials at a garbage dump in New Delhi.