A Philippine Billy Elliot: the Manila street kids training as ballet dancers
Filmmaker seeks Kickstarter funding to finish documentary about a school that takes children living on Philippine capital's mean streets and teaches them classical dance
Father Rocky Evangelista points to a scattering of pocket knives and ice picks surrendered by street children the Tuloy Foundation has rescued in the urban jungle of Metro Manila. "When they say 'Father, I don't need these any more', that's a victory," he says.
"They can't find food in the garbage bins so they steal. They kill if necessary," he says, recalling how one child told him he had stabbed a policeman in the stomach. "He said, 'Father, you know, life is like that.'"
Despised as pests and preyed on by thugs, rapists, pimps and murderers,for tens of thousands of abandoned orphans and abused runaways life on the streets in the Philippine capital region is unspeakable misery. Amid the grinding poverty, they are easily lured into a life of crime and drug abuse, says Evangelista, founder of the Tuloy Foundation.
His charity cares for more than 200 former street children in Alabang, Muntinlupa City, providing them with food, shelter, clothing and an education at its school, Tuloy sa Don Bosco Street Children's Village, which is also attended by hundreds of other poor children. But these provisions are mere necessities, he says.
"A human needs to play, to laugh … needs to go to a higher level of living. If we want to train these children completely, we should bring them to the arts."
