Colombia
One Man's Trash Is Another Man's Livelihood
In March of 2008, over 250 people from 34 different countries gathered to talk about trash in Bogotá.
Why? These people came together to attend the First International and Third Latin American Conference of Waste Pickers in Bogota, Colombia. The goal of the conference was to help waste pickers organize around the challenges they face and learn from each other's experiences.
Worldwide there are about 15 million people that earn their living by collecting and sorting through trash in order to find materials that can be recycled, resold and reused. Some waste pickers are actually hired by local governments and businesses to sort through trash to find recyclables, others do it illegally.
But waste pickers want more respect from their communities. They see waste picking is a business that is saving hundreds of thousands of pounds of salvageable material from landfills each year.
Conference participants devised strategies to work with their communities to legalize their trade in places where sorting through trash is prohibited. They broke out into groups and agreed on goals specific to their region. For instance, waste pickers in Asia are working to integrate the voices of environmental activists into their work. Waste pickers in Latin America plan to collaborate and organize with each other by using a community website.
Conferences like this one will help draw attention to the waste pickers' cause, as well as allow them to organize and establish a unified voice. Silvo Ruiz, a legal representatives working with the waste pickers, echoed the call for greater unity among waste pickers in the conference's final report.
We waste pickers will keep our hands in the garbage bag that provides our livelihood, but our head outside of the bag, to fight for the public policies we need to improve our situation. Intermediaries wait comfortably in their warehouses, and [w]aste [p]ickers do the hard work of collecting. Waste should not be for the intermediaries, but for the waste pickers who do all the work. United, we can fight for what is needed.
Delicious
Digg
StumbleUpon
Reddit
Facebook
Google
Yahoo
Colombia’s Library on Legs
Imagine if you couldn’t order that book you’ve wanted off Amazon.com or take that short walk or car ride to the library either. Instead, you have to wait for your book to be delivered — by a man and his two donkeys.
According to the New York Times, that’s exactly what Luis Soriano, a school teacher from La Gloria, Colombia and his two donkeys, Alfa and Beto, have been doing for the past decade.
The idea of a Biblioburro, or “donkey library,” came to Soriano while teaching impoverished children and seeing the impact of learning how to read. He travels with his donkeys to deliver books to rural people who don't have easy access to schools or libraries. Political upheaval and drug-related violence have made his travels dangerous. Yet despite confrontations with bandits and a fall that left him with a limp, Soriano continues to venture out with his donkeys.
Soriano and his Biblioburro show what people with limited resources can and are willing to do for the sake of education. Countries with high illiteracy rates (Colombia’s is 20 percent) can learn from his idea. Building schools and libraries outside city limits can empower people to share their own knowledge. Even in the most destitute areas, people want to be educated and exposed to the outside world — even if that means bringing them a library on legs.
Post
Nessun commento:
Posta un commento