Landfill Harmonic achieving good in Paraguay

While working as an ecological technician at the Cateura Landfill, the largest garbage dump of Paraguay’s capital Asunción, Favio Chávez got to know and befriended some of the 2,500 impoverished families who lived at the garbage dump working as recyclers. Witnessing the rampant illiteracy, extreme poverty, pollution and surrounding culture of drugs and gangs, Chávez became acutely aware that the children needed something positive in their lives – something to keep them out of the landfill and striving for something more.

Having previously been a music teacher, Favio decided to share his love of music with the children, and began teaching music lessons using the handful of personal instruments he owned. He soon realised there wasn’t enough instruments for all the eager students, so he started experimenting with making instruments using scraps of dirty oilcans, jars, wood, forks and other junk in the Cateura landfill, the instruments began to take shape and become finely tuned musical instruments - violins, flutes, cellos, drums…all made from trash. From this ingenuity, the “Recycled Orchestra” was formed with the local children as its members learning and performing Bach, Mozart and Beethoven.

So far, Chavez has taught music skills to over 120 children, inspiring hope, confidence and an awakening of passions within the children and their families who are now beginning to believe in a future beyond the slums of the landfill. The youth orchestra, now 30 members strong, has performed throughout the world and is the subject of the upcoming documentary Landfill Harmonic. There are 50 youth currently participating in the music education program who aspire to soon join the orchestra.

View the trailer to Landfill Harmonic - to be shown this coming Sunday, 27th September, at Zurich Film Festival.

You can make a difference

Did you know you can transform the lives of many Ugandan women with as little as £100?

Ugandan women aren’t short of smart business ideas - they just lack the means to start them. The team behind www.microbanker.com have given out more than eight thousand small business loans to women in rural Uganda to help them to work towards a better future and escape the poverty trap.

As a microbanker you select a business plan to donate to and the loan is passed onto the client – a lady in rural Uganda. While the client builds her business, she makes weekly repayments of the loan, including interest to cover the costs of the organization. The loans are repaid in a maximum of one year and each week you can follow ‘your’ client’s repayments.

The women repay their loans in a maximum of one year in weekly installments. Each installment is added to your online microbanker account. For financial regulatory reasons you cannot take out your donation after the loan has been repaid - it will remain a donation. But you can choose which microcredit to support with the repaid amount, meaning that your one donation will help women again and again to realize their dream of working for a better future!

www.microbanker.com

An all time favourite...

Do not despair yet - writing is still alive and kicking (for now)

With the unstoppable onward march of technology, I worry that writing will one day die out completely. And the amazing art of penmanship that has been around for centuries is quickly becoming extinct as masters pass away and fewer and fewer decide to take their place.

But do not despair just yet. Introducing Jake Weidmann, the youngest master penman in the United States. He is just one of twelve people left in the world to hold the title of master penman, a talent that demonstrates something as simple as handwriting can be hauntingly beautiful.

Football loving Thai kids who had a dream :)

High five to Costa Rica!

Costa Rica produced all of its electricity from renewables for months without a break at the start of the year. In March, the state-owned Costa Rican Electricity Institute (ICE) reported that the country hadn’t had to burn fossil fuels to supply the grid with electricity for the first two and a half months in 2015, a stretch that had never been previously attained by any nation, as reported by IFL Science.

The country’s clean streak is predominantly attributable to heavy rains experienced this year, which kept four of the main hydroelectric power stations busy. In fact, these have been churning out so much energy that virtually all of 2015’s electricity demands have been met through these plants, according to Quartz. The remainder of the country’s grid requirements have been met through a combination of wind, solar, biomass and geothermal energy.

Costa Rica is determined to become carbon-neutral by 2021, which seems an achievable goal given that the country is currently meeting around 94% of its energy needs from renewables. Around 68% is sourced from hydroelectric power plants, followed by geothermal energy that contributes about 15%. This dedication to clean energy combined with the country’s broader environmental policies has meant that Costa Rica has been consistently ranked in the top five eco-friendly countries worldwide according to The Telegraph.

Although what Costa Rica is achieving is something to aspire towards, it won’t be easy for many countries to follow in their footsteps. The country is adorned with a number of active volcanoes that allow for geothermal projects, such as the $958 million endeavour approved last year. Costa Rica also experiences high rainfall and features a mountainous landscape, both of which are ideal for the generation of renewable energy. Furthermore, the country is able to invest substantial amounts into environmental issues due to the fact that it ditched its military back in 1948.

I trust you, do you trust me?