Hi my name is Terry Leary and I have lived and worked in Granada, Nicaragua for the past 20 years. The La Hoya municipal garbage dump three miles outside of Granada, Nicaragua is the work place for 80 families.

They pay the dump owner for the right to be there and labor every day amidst towering mountains of trash. Several hundred men, woman and children scavenge and sweat for hours in the dump’s toxic stink in an attempt to merely survive, scouring third-hand left overs for anything of value in the hope they can gather enough to sell make some cash and buy food.

But the pickings are meager and their earning even less.

In Granada the municipal garbage trucks come by three mornings a week. On those mornings neighborhood people walk the streets to pick plastic and other items of any value from the garbage sitting by the curbs. Then, when the hardworking and poorly paid garbage men come by and collect the trash, they too go through it in search of things the first scavengers overlooked.

It is from this material, already twice picked over, that the people of the La Hoya Dump attempt to scrap a living.

Those 80 families do not live at the site but hike in for up to an hour from their ramshackle homes, buildings that often don’t have an adequate roof.

There are so many needs in the La Hoya community. I am seeking to fulfill one, by buying each of the 80 families three pieces of tin and a few nails, so that they can install simple but effective roofs on their houses.