{"id":5814,"date":"2006-01-05T08:48:03","date_gmt":"2006-01-05T08:48:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/silicon-valley-in-a-garbage-dump.html"},"modified":"2006-01-05T08:48:03","modified_gmt":"2006-01-05T08:48:03","slug":"silicon-valley-in-a-garbage-dump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/silicon-valley-in-a-garbage-dump.html","title":{"rendered":"Silicon Valley in a Garbage Dump"},"content":{"rendered":"

From the Philippines, a priest’s effort on behalf of his people:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

Father Beltran is pastor of Manila’s Parish of the Risen Christ, a congregation of scavengers who live alongside Smokey Mountain, the Philippine capital’s legendary — and ever smoldering — garbage dump. Father Beltran, who has lived among his parishioners for 27 years, knows their desperate marginalization, so he is aggressively pushing a high-tech solution to their poverty.<\/p>\n

"Globalization is only antagonistic to those who aren’t prepared for it," said Father Beltran, who was born on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao. "If the poor are unprepared, if they’re still linked to the industrial age when we’re living in the cybernetic age, then globalization won’t benefit them. So it’s the responsibility of the church and civil society to ready the poor. We shouldn’t hold back the march of history. Our faith tells us to move from the garden to the heavenly city."<\/p>\n

Smokey Mountain seems far from the heavenly city. Although it has been officially closed and replaced by a nearby dump, the massive mountain of garbage still smolders day and night as it towers over surrounding neighborhoods. People who live near the mountain can often be recognized throughout Manila by the aroma of burning garbage they carry with them.<\/p>\n

Father Beltran is building a new church in the shadow of the mountain, and it will showcase his commitment to a model of environmental stewardship that contrasts starkly with the dump.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the Philippines, a priest’s effort on behalf of his people: Father Beltran is pastor of Manila’s Parish of the Risen Christ, a congregation of scavengers who live alongside Smokey Mountain, the Philippine capital’s legendary — and ever smoldering — garbage dump. Father Beltran, who has lived among his parishioners for 27 years, knows their…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nSilicon Valley in a Garbage Dump - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/silicon-valley-in-a-garbage-dump.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Silicon Valley in a Garbage Dump - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"From the Philippines, a priest’s effort on behalf of his people: Father Beltran is pastor of Manila’s Parish of the Risen Christ, a congregation of scavengers who live alongside Smokey Mountain, the Philippine capital’s legendary — and ever smoldering — garbage dump. Father Beltran, who has lived among his parishioners for 27 years, knows their…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/silicon-valley-in-a-garbage-dump.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-01-05T08:48:03+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Silicon Valley in a Garbage Dump - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/silicon-valley-in-a-garbage-dump.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Silicon Valley in a Garbage Dump - Via Media","og_description":"From the Philippines, a priest’s effort on behalf of his people: Father Beltran is pastor of Manila’s Parish of the Risen Christ, a congregation of scavengers who live alongside Smokey Mountain, the Philippine capital’s legendary — and ever smoldering — garbage dump. Father Beltran, who has lived among his parishioners for 27 years, knows their…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/silicon-valley-in-a-garbage-dump.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2006-01-05T08:48:03+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/silicon-valley-in-a-garbage-dump.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/silicon-valley-in-a-garbage-dump.html","name":"Silicon Valley in a Garbage Dump - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2006-01-05T08:48:03+00:00","dateModified":"2006-01-05T08:48:03+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/silicon-valley-in-a-garbage-dump.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/silicon-valley-in-a-garbage-dump.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/silicon-valley-in-a-garbage-dump.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Silicon Valley in a Garbage Dump"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5814"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5814\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}