Shot on location in El Tejar, Guatemala

Karla. 11 when I first met her 2 years ago (2013), 13 now (2015). The same age as my son. She is a beautiful mess of potential. Dump by morning, school by afternoon. She lives with her mother and 12 other children (all related somehow) and sleeps on a stained mattress shared by her hen and 56 barbies and stuffed animals, all plucked from the dump. Dad is dead. Dump working supposedly brings some form of income, however, they have yet to see it impact them in any way except for the fact that every single thing they own was once seen as someone else's trash and the already narrow walking path in their house between one corrugated metal room and another is lined with head high stacks of flattened cardboard boxes and plastic bottles. I hoped with the passing of two years, something would have changed. It didn't. It doesn't. That's why one call's it a 'cycle of poverty'. Sometimes, two years is no more than 24 pieces of paper peeled off a calendar, crumpled, and thrown away.