The Gallery
All text and photographs copyright of Our Forgotten Children
Uruguay
Surrounded by garbage, little Johanna wheels a baby-stroller towards us, while her brother Axel, 11, loads up his cart with discarded bottles, hoping he can find enough to sell.
'Parasites' is what they call the people who live on top of the garbage dumps in Montevideo. Here in Malvin Norte, there is a river of sewage flowing underneath.
And yet - Uruguay has a past it can boast of. The first country in the world to give women the vote (1914). The first to organize a public health care system. To see where it all went wrong, you need look no further than the pristine coastline of Montevideo, with its multi-million dollar apartment towers gleaming in the sun.
Why are rich foreigners so drawn to this stretch of coastline? Harsh figures tell the story: Uruguay's unique tax concessions mean that 95% of Uruguay's wealth is in the hands of just 2% of its population.
For Javier, a volunteer with the local children's outreach programme, Gurises Unidos, the challenge is a huge and growing one. How to keep poor children in school past the age of eleven. Their parents started work at an even earlier age - and for them, scouring through garbage seems like an education in itself.