Sheffield Children's Book Award 2011 shortlist
Red House Children's Book award 2011 shortlist
CILIP Carnegie 2012 shortlist
Tower Hamlets Teen Booklist 2012
YALSA Top Ten Best Books for Young Adults 2011
Andy Mulligan was brought up in the south of London. He worked as a theatre director for ten years before travels in Asia prompted him to retrain as a teacher. He has taught English and drama in India, Brazil, the Philippines and the UK. He now divides his time between London and Manila.
Peguin.com
Small Steps Project helps the children and families living in desperately poor and inhumane conditions on and around the world's numerous inhabited landfill sites. The project provides shoes to protect against the syringes, glass, metal and toxic waste through which these families wade daily, searching for items they can recycle for an average wage of 50p a day.
Our aim is to supply children and families with the things that will prolong their survival, from shoes and clothes, to water and food, to hygiene packs and medical care.
We work together with established NGOs and local charities to provide ongoing care for the children, be it educational, social, medical or all of the above. Our aim is to get children to take small steps off the rubbish dumps, into school and out of poverty.
Each project we do is filmed and edited into a documentary which we then screen widely to create awareness for the plight of dump children. We hope, through these films and projects, to regulate health and safety globally, insisting that children are not working as scavengers and that their parents are paid a living wage so that they can support their families without jeopardising their health.
'Small Steps: Cambodia, Phnom Penh' is the first of a series of short films which will make up Around The World in 80 Dumps, directed and produced by Amy Hanson.
http://www.watchknowlearn.tv/Video.aspx?VideoID=42597&CategoryID=2111
Raphael lives on a dumpsite, eking out a living sifting through rubbish. One unlucky-lucky day, he makes an extraordinary and deadly discovery. Now he and his two friends, Gardo and Rat, are wanted by the corrupt forces that run the city and will stop at nothing to get back what they've lost.
From the slums to the mansions of the elite, it's going to take all of their quick-thinking and fast-talking to stay ahead. And to stay alive.
Penguin.com
When two boys find a wallet with a key, some money and a letter on their morning trawl through the rubbish heap called Behala, they are stunned. Not the usual shuppa, paper filled with shit, or the leavings of the city, the rotting food, rags and paper, but money. They seek out Rat, who they know will be able to hide their find while they work out what to do. They are the lowest of the low, the poorest of people, the ones who reuse rubbish for a living Illiterate, relying on food and a smattering of education from the local Catholic priest, they are emaciated, smelly and fast.
When the police swarm over Behala asking if anyone has found something, they are quiet, it's never a good idea to be mixed up with the authorities. But Gaudo's mother calls out that the boys have found something and almost swallows her words. The boys try to explain that it was nothing, but they become targets, and one is taken by the police and brutally questioned.
The boys begin to realise that they have found something quite significant, and so begin to piece together the information they have about the wallet and its contents. Furtively, using their skills learnt on the streets, they collect what is in the locker belonging to the key they found, from there they seek out the owner of the letter, a man in jail, near death. They find that he was the servant to a wealthy embezzling senator who lost a great deal of money, and the boys work through the clues given to finally unravel the mystery of where the money was hidden.
A fascinating story of the boys using their learnt skills surviving in this the poorest of places, to outwit the authorities and find the hidden money, ensuring their own futures, will have kids eagerly reading to the end. Along the way they will learn of how some other children in the world live, those on the streets in Manila, a stunning contrast to the wealth of that place, and the ease in which we live.
- Fran Knight