My day started out very early in the morning today – earlier than I normally start, even as a morning show host! The World Vision crew and I were up by 3 a.m. so we could head off into the slum area of Estancia, a port community three hours from Iloilo City. There we met 10-year-old Darwin, who gets up at that hour every morning to head to the fish market.

We followed him there, and found ourselves amidst a busy scene – with fishermen bringing in their catch to sell to fish brokers, who then sell the fish to market vendors to be sold to consumers later that morning. There were hundreds of buckets of fish of all kinds – from sardines to shark. Darwin’s job is to beg local fishermen to give him some of their catch – a small bag full. He then sells the fish at the market to make a few pesos to buy rice for his family. He does this every single morning. After that, about two hours later, he goes to a local fish processing operation (a very small one, with only six people working), to descale fish to be dried in the sun. If school is out for the summer, he does that all day so he can make a few more pesos. If there is school, he cleans as many fish as he can before school starts at 7 a.m.

It is a lot of work for a small boy – and he usually goes alone, as his mother must care for the rest of their children at home, and his father is a fisherman. It was no surprise to me to discover that Darwin is a very serious little boy – I chatted with him a bit through our interpreter, but it was very hard to get him to smile. That’s because this young boy has accepted a lot of responsibility at a very young age –to work hard every day to help provide food for his mother, father, and sisters. He also is determined to continue going to school, something his family fully supports. Darwin’s father, who has been fishing all his life, says he wants a better life for Darwin. He does not want him to become a fisherman.

This afternoon, I met some other children who also make a living from the sea – but in a different way. Every day, 13-year-old Joseph goes out on into the harbour with his father and two younger brothers to dive for scrap metal. They take out makeshift foam skiffs to help them stay afloat, and spend hours diving into the dirty water, hoping to salvage enough to sell at the local scrap yard for money for food. Joseph’s father has been a scavenger since he was a young boy himself, and now his children are helping him as he tries to support his 12 children, feeding them, clothing them, and sending them to school. Joseph’s father, like Darwin’s, wants a different life for his sons and daughters as well.

World Vision is trying to help families so that children don’t have to work so hard to help put food on their own tables, and so that parents can break a cycle of poverty and struggle that they have been through themselves. Later this week, I’ll be introduced to some of the projects World Vision is working on to help make that wish a reality. I look forward to that.