Transforming a community garbage dump into something extraordinary!
Maria Silvia and her family have transformed a community garbage dump in Havana into a a piece of extremely fertile land where a variety of native trees and shrubs now grow freely and provide compost for future generations of plants.
Tu no puedes comprar al joven
En verdad, es un esfuerzo de mi parte -dejar mis concepciones de como uno se ve la participación de un joven en la comunidad. En el Ouest, el idea de participación en su comunidad es definido como: iniciar proyectos, ser líder, o simplemente participar en actividades sociales organizados por los de más. Sin embargo, la […]
Honeymoon, Dismissed Development Ego and ‘the Italians’
One week in, I have absolutely no idea what 100 Voices will teach me. What is very clear is that everything I have studied, discussed and thought about up to now feels simply not useful to process what I am experiencing. My gut says that to learn the most I need to be looking at […]
Ya viene!
It feels like I’m in East Africa again. For a number of reasons: the quiet beaches, the tease to no end culture, the centrality of community and family, the love for music and food but above all because of time. Time – we all manage it differently based on where you live. Here, there is […]
Off Record
Esmeraldas is a wrap up. First community finished, down in the books. Now it’s documenting time- videos, audio, photos, and text. The question I ask myself is how to present the individuals singularly. The experience is own entity, meanwhile we have to dissect and cut out individuals from the story to present systematically their words. […]
Building bridges – blindfolded
To be honest when this project was launched with a mind for working with youth aged 18 -25, I never really conceptualized a clear idea of what these people would be like. Here is what I knew: they are costeña (i.e they love their salsa, seafood, football and being loud and expressive in general). There […]
Identity Politics – some things just cannot be pinned down
I will often be the first to rant about the impossibility of defining an individual’s identity. Simplifying it to ethnicity, race, gender, religion and all that fun census stuff – does not quite cut it. The fact is that once you explore each of these further you realize that the boxes are not accommodating anymore.
Rainbow of Desire
What I have been feeling is perfectly normal. Wow this might be one of the first not projected statements I have written, and which now I am condemning as projected as I reflect on this. Development Theater, developed by many but spearheaded by Agusto Boal, is one of the techniques we are using during 100 […]
Lucha de Voces
When you start a journey, a 100 voices journey, to collect stories of people you have never met, whose homes you have never visited, and whose deepest thoughts you cannot even imagine, you wonder how the first voice will be distinguishable from the others. I arrived to Ecuador a few days ago to conduct the […]
Just not the traditional way
Some news: the project, in an official sense, has yet to begin. Yet were I might have once allowed this to bother me I feel oddly reassured in the plan that lies ahead. That is, even though the start we envisioned never took off some other kind of beginning did take place when we arrived […]
