The other day I visited the humble barrio of Miramonte, Caloocan, one of the many urban poor communities of Manila. I arrived with Doms and Arianne from the Anglican Church with whom I am working this week. The Anglicans have esatablished a thriving and beautiful partnership with CASLICA, a women’s group in Caloocan, over the last five years. The group of 40-50 empowers the mainly women in different livelihood endeavors like sewing and massage. There is very sparse economic opportunity in places like this and idleness is everywhere.
There was also alot of misplaced plastics and assorted trash everywhere! There simply isn’t a place for this stuff and it comes to clog and permeate the roads, drains, rivers and general environs.
Not anymore!
We showed them how to pack the 1.5 Liter bottles and they took to it enthusiastically. You see they have saved up enough money between the 40 of them to raise 600$ of the 800$ needed to buy a lot for a church. Currently they meet under some old tin, held together by bamboo poles and plastic ties. Their vision, (well, our vision now): to build a Church from ecobricks and assorted local bottles. Many of them wrote their vision onto their ecobrick. With this we can turn the plastic problem into a resource.
The plastic 1,5L bottles are too much of a luxury in Miramonte, so the Church will provide the bottles. The women in return will fill them up with plastics.
I was amazed to discover at a small nearby excavation, that the ground under the community is an amazing brown clay! Wow. Looking around, the houses and homes and shops are dismal cheap constructions made from concrete and hollow blocks. Their is no beauty or comfort in these constructions– they serve more to make the concrete corporations money than they do housing real people. This clay however, WOW– there lies some profound potential for humane housing.
The best thing about the endeavour though… the women repaid me for my little talk and demo with massage! Wow. They are good. 🙂
