A few weeks ago we profiled "Cabrera Verde," a community group trying to clean up the North Coast town of Cabrera.  They just sent us the following notice of a fundraiser they're doing to help clean up Cabrera's beaches after Semana Santa.  If you've ever lived in or visited the DR during Easter Week, you doubtless know how Dominicans flock to the beaches during this period, and you may know the terrible state those same Dominicans leave the beaches in -- littered like no other time of the year.  Around some beaches the hotels on the beach take care of the massive clean-up; in some places like Cabrera, it's up to a local community group or collection of concerned individuals.  So we've decided to pass on their announcement here in the Green Team blog.  If you plan to be anywhere near Cabrera on Sunday, April 9, why not attend and see firsthand what Cabrera-Verde is about.

And if you know of other such efforts to keep the beaches clean, please let us know at greenteam@dr1.com   

Soft Ball, Fund-Raising Event.

The object of this event is to raise funds for Samana Santa.

We need to provide more trash cans and an additional 20 people to clean the beaches

for this time of year.

We will also be providing Banners for the beaches and Stickers for the trash cans

Asking to Keep the Beach clean

We will have only a limited amount of tickets for this Event.

You can purchase tickets at the Catalina or

Contact:

Victoria (809) 589-7951

Monica - Orchid Bay (809) 589-7773

            Silvia    (809) 589-7700

Richard (809) 768-4073

Hotel Catalina (809) 589 -7722

If you cannot attend, you can always purchase tickets for Friends or Staff.

The following is a story originally published in the online edition of Dominican Today by Green Team member Billy Adames, known on the DR1 board as "Texas Bill."  We thank Dominican Today for giving us permission to reprint the article in the blog, together with Billy's original photos of the event.

You can view the story in its original form at http://www.dominicantoday.com/app/article.aspx?id=11569

Santiago, Dominican Republic
March 19, 2006

It is 10:00 AM Sunday Morning, March 19, 2006.  Two pickup trucks pull into one of the more trashy streets in barrio Puebla Nueva in Santiago.  The trucks stop and out jump six young boys armed with shovels and push brooms.

They wear T-shirts emblazoned with the logo “Cleanup Brigade” on the front and the motto, “Help Us to Help You Help Yourselves” on the back (both in Spanish).

The people on this street don’t comprehend what is about to happen.  When the boys start to sweeping the gutters and sidewalks, putting the refuse into plastic bags and putting those bags into the trucks, they finally get the idea of what is taking place.

The “Cleanup Brigade” has invaded and is doing its thing.  The city of Santiago has not seen fit to clean these streets for quite some time due to many reasons, one of which was a lack of funds.

The idea of a “Cleanup Brigade” is the brainchild of one Robert Bliestein, of Tampa, Florida.  When interviewed by this writer, he stated that this is but one of his many past projects to help the Dominican people find their place in the sun.

It must be noted that Mr. Bleistein underwrote the entire expenses of this venture totally out of his own pocket.  In fact, he traveled to the Dominican Republic solely to implement this action.

Previously, he has contributed time and money to several orphanages in the Puerto Plata and Santiago areas.

This is his 5th trip to the Dominican Republic on his various efforts to provide a “just a little bit” of aid to communities here.

His idea for the Cleanup Brigade stems from a sincere desire to bring that ingredient of “self help” to the forefront and to try to get community minded people to respond to his beginning efforts.

It would appear that he was successful because when he explained how to organize a community effort to those listening, he received many favorable comments and promises to “make it happen” in their community.

Time will tell.

-- Billy Adams

A Grass Roots Development Study

The Background

Four years ago, we first started visiting the small fishing village of Punta Rucia.  As time went by, we started meeting local people there, or they started recognizing us and slowly we became more involved in this small community and the surrounding village of Estero Hondo.  Our first helping hand in the community was to assist and help the Landowners Association title their lands, a process which is ongoing today.

Some years ago, in a conversation with the President of the ‘Cooperative de Pesacadores y Afines’ and government appointed Biodiversity officer for the area, the idea of working with this village to create an ecologically sustainable living space and a model for true eco tourism was born.  Someone in the conversation had the wisdom to draw an analogy between the fishing resources, and a farm.  He explained that the bay, where the community harvests over 80% of their daily food, is like a farm.  On a farm, one does not pick the green fruit; you wait for it to become ripe and fully grown and you replant every season.  The ocean, as a food resource, requires similar management to keep it sustainable, healthy and producing. 

A light went on in the eyes of the audience and one statement from that day remains in my mind: “Our fish are being depleted and we are not managing our fishing grounds and resources properly.  We are sinking into poverty.  The only hope we have is to sell our lands, unless we can think of other solutions.  But we do not have the education, the resources or the vision as to what can be accomplished to save our fishing grounds and our lands.”

This presented a clear and honest problem statement, coming from the community itself!  I left this gathering with a firm resolve to bring the resources and the community together – and to do it in the form of a model where others could perhaps learn from our process. 

An Exercise in Patience

Talking to the community leaders about doing something in that community proved to be an exercise in patience.  Two years and many meetings went by.  Meetings where we became like broken records: Sustainability, not quick profits!  Transparency, not hijacking resources meant for a specific development ending up in the pockets of the community leaders.  Just as I was giving up hope, in November 2005, the community leaders finally showed that they were now starting to understand what sustainable development is and indicated that they will work with us in a transparent manner. 

Remarkably in this process, we came across something which I term the ‘legacy of charity.’  Initially the community leaders took a position that work will be done by someone from the outside, we will get good press and perhaps the community will benefit.  Of course, they would personally benefit by being paid for the correct permissions and the correct approvals where-ever these were needed.  This is generally the way things are done here in the DR.  It took time, much perseverance, convincing and discussion, and much simply ‘sticking to our guns’, until joint understanding was reached. 

This was a major shift.  If anyone asked me today what the single aspect of this 2-year long process was that eventually brought about a shift, I have to say a focused message, perseverance, education and developing trust in our involvement in the community.    

Establishing Trust

Initially the community leaders were unprepared for the concept of a community driven project, where the community sets the priorities and takes an active part in solving problems and working towards goals and priorities.  We were quite taken aback by this stance, but soon learnt to simply continue to explain, educate and talk, each time with supporting information substantiating the vision.  Over a period of time, this process established trust. 

The major lesson for us here is: don’t move too fast and lose the community involvement in the process.  Community decision-making takes time, the pace is different, it is not the same as setting priorities and taking actions as one would do in managing a business. 

The Prevailing Wisdom - One Growing Season Only!

We experienced many frustrating and also funny moments during this period.  Our attorney wanted to know what we meant by experimenting with a new tropical crop for the Dominican Republic, to perhaps move away from the monoculture and globalization model of bananas and pineapples.  On finding out that we may be talking of crops that would take 3 to 5 years to mature to first fruit, he literally rolled around laughing.  “Three to five years, he crowed, in the Dominican Republic?  Never!  It is not possible”, he said.  “Don’t ever plan on anything that takes longer than one growing season in the DR.  The people will never understand it.” 

This reminded me of a paragraph from Jared Diamond’s book Collapse.  How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.  In speaking about ‘One-Liner environmental objections’, he talks about this one ..: “If those environmental problems become desperate, it will be at some time far off in the future, after I die, and I can’t take them seriously.”  Diamond then goes on to say that each of the dozen or so major environmental problems currently, will become acute within the lifetime of young adults now alive.  “Most of us who have children consider the securing of our children’s future as the highest priority to which to devote our time and money.  It makes no sense for us to do these things ….while simultaneously doing things undermining the world in which our children will be living 50 years from now.” 

It seems as if we need to collectively and ecologically start planning and working for longer than one growing season.

Point Go!

We were now at Point Go with the support of the community leaders.  The next blog will focus on the process of finding out what we collectively have to work with, what we need and how to take the first steps.    

-- Christa

The Green Team is pleased that Cabrera Verde accepted our invitation to discuss here how they got their community effort started that, by all accounts, has substantially improved the North Coast coastal community of Cabrera.  We hope that this might serve as an inspiration, if not a model, for other communities to take the initiative and clean up their locale.  Once a community is thus mobilized, it is often easier to move onto other improvement initiatives, such as environmental education, as Cabrera-Verde is now doing. 

As Mr. Ellis mentions here, one of the keyes is working closely with the local authority.  Not every community is lucky enough to have a mayor like Jorge Cavoli, but then, with municipal elections coming up this May, perhaps now is the time for concerned communities to push hard to ensure that the next office-holder is one they can work with well on such endeavors to go beyond "politics as usual."

My name is Richard John Ellis, one of the founding members of the Cabrera Verde Foundation.

Most of us involved in Cabrera Verde live, work or have business in Cabrera.  The concept stemmed from an idea of Mike Siemer to have a few people donates some funds to employ one or two additional workers for the Ayuntamiento de Cabrera (Municipality of Cabrera) to help keep the town a little cleaner. At first Mike and I had a difference of opinion on how to do this. I thought we should get as many people as possible in Cabrera involved and his reaction was these organized things rarely work out. I said I would put the time in and we’ll see.

The biggest advantage we had to succeed in this endeavor was having the support of Jorge Cavoli, Mayor of Cabrera, and the many residents of Cabrera who take pride in their community and surroundings.  We found a few people willing to help by making monthly donations to increase the staff for cleaning Cabrera and the road sides.

The first test was a Fundraising Dinner.  Jason Matthews was gracious enough to provide the use of his villa and tickets where sold for a Fundraising Dinner. The price was 2,000.00 pesos a ticket and at that price I thought maybe we could sell around 50 tickets. Victoria Hernández helped to organize the dinner and ticket sales. Sabina Puls, Nicole Visetti and Sylvie Gaudet did ticket sales. 

We sold around 100 tickets!  The local response to this concept was way more supportive then I imagined it would be.

With funds raised from our 1st fundraising dinner, Cabrera Verde and the Ayuntamiento de Cabrera have restored Playa Diamante from a neglected beach to a location that is thriving with local commerce and is being enjoyed by all.

We have held a 2nd fundraising dinner and we are now in the process of doing the same type of project for Playa Breton.

In addition to the beach clean-up and the preparation of the formal walkway with railing to Playa Breton (see pictures),

we’re creating tables and siting areas on the hillside, preparing a parking lot, providing trash bins, putting up anti-litter signage, landscaping and creating waterfalls to enhance the spot.

We have also donated roadside anti-litter signs that the Ayuntamiento have posted around town.

An important point always to remember is you have to maintain what you do.  We now employ 5 people for maintenance to help the Ayuntamiento de Cabrera.

Part of our energy must be directed to the education of the next generation.  We have tried to involve the kids in the clean-ups and in such tasks as painting the trash bins, so that they feel involved and invested in the project.  We also held a contest for kids to create a new anti-litter slogan, with the winner getting a donated discman.

For more information on us and our projects, please visit our website, designed and constructed by one of our members, Mondi.  We include a list of our working and financially supportive members at this link.  We also believe in keeping our finances transparent, and provide a breakdown of these at this link.

Over the next few years we have many ideas for next steps, from education to energy. financing is only part of what is needed to accomplish these goals.  To make Cabrera Verde successful, it will require help and participation in the fields of Human Resources, Education and in the knowledge of available technology.  This month we will have a meeting to take a look at the “things to do” list, the “how much do you need” list and the “who’s going to do it and how much time will it take” list.