SMP coop. training - at Odet's house

Today was a very long day - strategic planning session for the Smokey Mountain SMP cooperative from 7am until almost midnight (I am counting about an hour in traffic through flooded streets to get home. I thought I was waterskiing for a while there). The training session was facilitated by a women who does much work with grassroots organizations and it was primarily in Tagalo, so unfortunately for me I did not understand much. But the group was incredibly energetic. This is their fourth session and they are really acting more and more as a team. The facilitator tells me she did very little, just structure their ideas. The big issue to tackle is water distribution. The metric cube is distributed at 18 pesos for most people living in Manila. For Smokey Mountain, the price is 200 pesos for the same volume! The problem is they have millions of pesos in unpaid bills, but the households claim that they paid. There's someone in the middle stealing their money. It's a big issue and outside of our main focus on recyclables, but important nonetheless. How can they do anything without access to clean water?

We are in Odet's house, I've spoken about her in my first post. This woman has a few stories to tell, they have written and rewritten about her, I am told. Captain of the Filipino women's chess team in the 80s, advisor for theatres of the opressed in the Philippines, leader of Mother Earth Philippines an organization that planted millions of trees across the country last weekend (a movement, she calls it, as they work off of creative energies and donations that go directly to projects). Her house or compound rather has been converted into a community space and every inch is being used. The backyard is a thriving jungle (I just love the tropics, look at these hanging tarzan branches!) and a testament to the use of organic fertilizer, she tells us.

It's harder to pull off in urban environments but Bert Guevara is doing it and has been for almost 10 years. He's wearing the red polo shirt with Anita in the white t-shirt along with the board members of SMP. Amazing guy, Bert, barangay captain (the barangay the smallest govt unit here) for Sun Valley, a model community for recycling; he is also involved in various private entities that recycle or store trash, as he saw the value in this new market way before any one else. He is also on the National Solid Waste Management Commission, created after the new solid waste law RA 9003. Like so many people I have met here, Bert does a million things. We are so lucky to have Bert counseling our MRFs and I will be visiting Sun Valley on Tuesday.

Here I am with Odet, they call her Tita Odet or Aunty as a sign of respect. Beside me is a sculpture of Odet, her family has always been around artists and own a few galleries I believe. There is also a standing sculpture of José Rizal, the Filipino national hero. You can find more information about this young dashing martyr at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Rizal