Dispatch from the environment team
Al fin, Cartagena. While other policy teams were suiting up
for meetings with the DEA, etc., the environment team was in a taxi in the
midst of the other side of
Cartagena—one that tourists rarely see. Rafael Nuñez is home to 13,000 of the
poorest people in the city, which has one of the most extreme income
disparities in the world. By 8 a.m. the heat was already settling heavy on the
neighborhood, and we drove past a trash-covered shore and bustling fish market
before finding what we thought was our final destination.
It turns out that
there are two sites for the non-profit Granitos de Paz in Rafael Nuñez, and we
happened to have stumbled first upon the cuter one: a daycare center for
hundreds of infants and pre-schoolers. The center had a nursery, a ‘dance
studio’ with a full-wall mirror, an open-air cafeteria that served fresh meals,
and lots of singing, clapping children. We were smitten.
We eventually were able to drag ourselves away to the site
of our actual meeting, the Granitos de Paz office, run by the lovely and lively
Diana Peña. There, we learned a bit more about the amazing work of Granitos de
Paz, a non-profit that is leading micro-finance investment and urban
agriculture development in the neighborhood. They have built 42 houses in
Rafael Nuñez in the last eight years, and they teach families to grow crops in
the narrow, sunny spaces behind their homes. Urban farmers of the neighborhood
sell spearmint (for mojitos), basil, red pepper, eggplant, and cucumber to some
of the fanciest hotels in Cartagena, and Granitos de Paz also offers cooking
classes for growers to learn how to incorporate their fresh produce into meals
at home.
Off to the side of the office was a ‘senior center’ which might more
accurately be described as a ‘dance club’ given all the boogying that was going
down at 9 a.m. We ended our visit with a walk around the neighborhood to visit
some of the neighborhood gardens and take in the luscious smells. Though
tangential to our research topic on biofuels, the visit to Granitos de Paz
certainly renewed our faith in the possibility for grassroots, environmentally
inspiring economic development in Colombia. We were also all grateful to have
found a place to retire/get down with some Latin beats in a few years.
- Allie
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