AID

Dear Ela, your idea of introducing environmental-friendly soap is of course a great one and there is nothing I wish more for these people than that they may not make the same mistakes as we did polluting the environment etc whilst recklessly striving for development and money. However, in my opinion (I think we already once discussed this) this is something that has to be done on a large scale level. The local (and of course national) government has to introduce laws to cut down pollutions of all kind (they could start with the obvious: filters for cars, for example), if they have nothing to clean polluted water it is their duty to replace all the chemistry being used by environmental-friendly stuff (the same should be done in Europe just as well, of course!!!). I already insinuated that I dare not imagine the look on people’s faces if I told them to not throw there rubbish out of the bus-window. Just imagine what would happen if I told them something about using some other kind of soap (whilst they are struggling to afford the kind they have). Furthermore, would it be sustainable giving out some restricted amount of soap, (Well, it would hopefully bring overall awareness one step further, of course) if there is no way people would (be able to) continue using such. How effective would it be?

It would be a dream to organise demonstrations, but up banners and stuff concerning these issues (there are many of them, just as in Europe).

The money I have at my disposal (originally 100USD donated by my dear family) I’m using to pay for teaching materials (to make photo-copies, I have to take the printed sheets (there is a computer here) to Tena and pay 3cents for each copy -I have 165 students in the school only). Another project of the near future is to decorate the school a little bit. I would like to create some small gardens around the school and plant some flowers (colours around the school are a rarity), we will paint stones (which is for once something we have in abundance ;p) and put them around the school (trees, gardens, playgrounds etc) for decoration, I would also like to put up some signs to point out the essence of wastebaskets and the like. This kind of project would of course have it’s pedagogic effect to it and at the same time help making the kid’s school a nicer place (which will do its own to further on motivate the children). There are many more projects I have in mind. I would like to put up a huge Labyrinth (costs of such would be minimal), maybe some mosaics, benches (there is nothing for the kids to sit on), some more wastebaskets (There is a total of three to be found here: about 400 students sharing 3 waste-baskets. Yes, I have already talked about that to the Headmaster and put an extra bucket outside my door). I’d like to realize some workshops dealing with wood and maybe some drawing-lessons (materials= very expensive) for the students of the Colegio. I will, however, have to find some more ways to help financing all of this.