Cateura, Paraguay is a small city that has grown atop a massive garbage dump and is regarded as one of the poorest slums in Latin America, a village where people live among a sea of garbage. Incredibly, the landfill itself is the primary form of subsistence for many residents within the slum who pick through waste for items that can be used or sold. Prospects for most of the children born in Cateura is bleak as gangs and drugs await many of them. But then one day, something amazing happened.
A garbage picker named Nicolás Gómez (known as “Cola”) found a piece of garbage that resembled a violin and brought it to musician Favio Chávez. Using other objects collected from the dump the pair constructed a functional violin in a place where a real violin is worth more a house. Using items gleaned completely from trash pair then built a cello, a flute, a drum, and suddenly a wild idea was born: could a children’s orchestra be born in one of the most depressed areas in the world? As you can guess the answer was yes