Garbage Dreams

It's been a busy time, but I thought I'd get a quick post up about something I've been doing at work.
Part of my new job this year is encouraging community/service work amongst students at school.  At the end of last year I received an email about a film that had been released and was looking to do screenings in schools/organisations around Cairo. It sounded amazing as I was immediately trying to find out more.
The film is called Garbage  Dreams and is a documentary filmed over two-to-three years in the Mansheeyet Nasr (Garbage City) area of Cairo. This is where all the rubbish from the city goes and the community of Copts living there sort the garbage by hand, then compost or recycle it. We've blogged about Garbage City before when we visited the recycling project there. The film follows three boys/young men as they grow up in the "trash trade", trying to make a living, but also facing the same pressures of being a teenager that anyone feels. The film also shows how the Zebeleen community is having their business taken away from them by foreign garbage companies, and so their livelihood is under threat.
It's a truly brilliant film and more can be found out about it on their website www.garbagedreams.com and on the PBS website which also has extra making-of footage, a game and lesson ideas.
The Zebaleen currently manage to recycle 80% of what they receive (compared to 20% in the UK) but he told me that up to 20% of the paper they receive, for example, cannot be recycled as it has been contaminated by organics. So they are now trying to encourage people to sought their rubbish into into "organic" and "non-organic" which makes recycling easier. Thee is also a Recycling School for boys which is an amazing project, sponsored by P&G and kids from garbage city are paid to come to the school and learn about numeracy, literacy, computers and finance - all in the context of their garbage collecting/recycling. For example they are paid by P&G for every branded shampoo bottle they collect (this is in P&G's interests, because otherwise bootleg products are resold in bottles), and this means that their parents can get money to help them compensate for the fact that the kids cannot earn money from garbage collecting when they are in class. All very clever!
So after hearing about this film I was totally enthused and felt we had to do something at school. Since September I have organised a themed Environment Day (aka Green Day!) and managed to rearrange the school timetable to get 800 students into a 300-seater theater (three back-to-back sittings, with only a half our break) to watch the film. I also arranged for a speaker from the NGO Spirit of Youth to come in and he brought with him three representatives from the Source Segregation team that are trying to encourage people to separate their rubbish and two boys from The Recycling School. They visited our break time and advised us on sorting our rubbish and this gave our kids the chance to ask them questions (as the students had just watched the film). Afterwards they did a Q&A with the 6th-formers which went really well.
After school there was another showing of the film for staff and another Q&A.
A very busy day with lots going on (and lots of other people involved too!) but afterwards it was great to have so many comments from other staff that although they normally don't like all the disruption to the school day, when they saw the film they thought it was really worthwhile. Others also said that when they spoke to their students about it they were really interested and there was a real buzz.
Fundraising during the day has so far raised 4000LE that I know about about I suspect another 7000LE but I'm not sure of that other total yet. I have pledged that all this money will go to The Recycling School and I'm hoping that I can arrange a visit to give the donation to them. I really hope that I can continue the work on this project with the buzz and the links that have been created.
Anyway! Enough about work!!! Posts coming soon from Scotty about the two gigs played last night by Mostly Vegas and One For The Road - a great start to the Christmas part season!