serving our community since 1997
If you received this issue of the Homeless Voice in your mailbox please go to pg 4 We have an Emergency! Part of the North American Street Newspaper Association
COSAC Foundation | PO Box 292-577 Davie, FL 33329 | 954-924-3571
Going Pink! John Plaster,Loss Prevention Operative
For years we have used bright yellow shirts and vests for safety, however things need to change. It seems that there are individuals out there that are not homeless but are scammers who went to a store and bought the same color vests and shirts, standing on corners collecting donations that have nothing to do with us. Some of them even got a hold of our yellow shirts by stealing them when our current vendor was taking a break at the corner and then going to their own corner trying to collect donations. We have never prosecuted them but for now our loss prevention department is going out full force and looking for them with a police detail officer from each county. To combat the problem we are “Going Pink.” Our vendors will be wearing PINK shirts. If you see a yellow or orange shirt out there and they say they are the Homeless Voice you can call our office at 954-92-HELP-1 or 954-924-3571. Feel free to call the police as well. Our vendors have Identifications that expire every so often so feel free to ask them for their ID and look at the expiration date. When in doubt simply call us. Or perhaps you prefer to send in your donations via check. If this does not work we will be taking their pictures and printing them in our own paper to stop them from misleading you all who give from the heart. If it is someone who is homeless we will ask them to come back to the shelter instead of calling the police. We are going PINK and feel free to take a Wink at their Id!
We’re Going Pink!
This man is an imposter. He has stolen shirts and buckets. He was last seen in Plamtation where we met with police to get our shirts and bucket back. The sad part of the story? He is not homeless.
Donating Time vs. Donating Money
“Hey Jack”
Staff Writer
Richard Carlish
The past two days here at the shelter have been over ridden with sorrow. Three people we know have passed on and writing these stories never gets easier. I really wish I could write a story with some humor for a change, but it never seems to be possible. After 12 years of being one of the favorite Cosac characters Jack Moman peacefully died in his sleep. From the moment he woke up, Jack would wheel himself behind the kitchen where he stayed for a good part of the day. That was his domain. If we didn’t see him there we would ask, “Where’s Jack?” You’ve never seen a man laugh so much. Even when you couldn’t understand a word he was saying you would laugh because he would start to. Jack was an amazing man considering his serious health issues. When most of us would hate the world if we had health concerns like he did, Jack went through each day a happy and entertaining guy. Just days after he had three stints put in his heart, he was taking his position behind the kitchen being as entertaining and funny as ever. Although we loved him for his contagious personality, we also loved him for his stubbornness and at times his orneriness. He had no problem telling it as it is. When he was in one of his rare moods, we still would laugh since it was just as funny to hear him go off. Like a child whose toy had been taken away Jack wouldn’t quit until he was finished with what he had to say. I suggested we design a memorial plaque in his honor and place it on the back wall behind the kitchen, just as certain streets and buildings are named after fallen heroes. Never again will I be able to say, “hey Jack,” and that hurts
We all loved Jack more than he will ever know, but at least because we did feel that way we told him those exact words every day.
deeply. He was a Cosac icon. One of the characters who will as long as this foundation exists will always be mentioned when we talk about our best clients. If we made a list of our all-time favorites, Jack would be no worse than a tie for second. I’m getting so tired of writing these stories about the most wonderful and good hearted people dying here. When is it going to end? Sadly, never because that’s just the way natures designed, but call me selfish. I would prefer to have more time with them. We all loved Jack more than he will ever know, (but at least because we did feel that way we told him those exact words every day.) Too many times people don’t say those three words enough and regret not doing so when someone they love passes. We did, so there’s no doubt Jack passed knowing he was truly loved.
In terms of the homeless problem of today, there is really no wrong way to help and assist. Any help is beneficial and wonderfully amazing for the community in general. It has long been debated on what is better, giving money to the homeless or giving your time to the homeless. And, the answer still remains that both are important in their own way. Giving money to the homeless will provide them with clothing, education, food, and shelter. It will take care of the homeless in more ways than you even realize and the more money that is given, the more services and help can be provided. But, giving money is not the only way to help. You and your friends and family can also give your time to the homeless. Giving time can be just as valuable as giving money. Volunteers are able to feed the homeless, work on projects that will benefit the homeless and overall, be there as a support and anchor when times get tough. During the holidays, many people love to feed the homeless and assist will meals. Many people look past the homeless and don’t find it their duty to help with their time or their money. The reality is that we are all different and we are entitled to do as we please. You as an individual don’t have to sit back and do nothing. If you feel a plight or just a feeling of love, then give to the homeless, be it money or your time. It will help in more ways than you even know and you will be providing an inkling of hope to so many and to yourself.
Our Purpose: To Help the Homeless Learn How to Help Themselves
The Homeless Voice World Edition 2013
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Thank you for your support Angels! Your support keeps our doors open! This year my wish for a good year is that we all pray for the Lord to send a cure down for all Cancers. Lord we ask you to give wisdom to all cancer researchers and scientists so they can come up with a cure. Lord allow the elected officials to declare war on cancer and make it a goal of the President to rid the earth of all cancer in the next three years. Lord we ask that you heal all people who are dying of cancer. Lord we ask this in Your name and we ask that it happen in the next three years. In Jesus’s name Amen
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About the COSAC Foundation
The COSAC Foundation was originally established in May 1997 to partner with other social service agencies, in the area, that provided help to the homeless population. COSAC also independently feeds the homeless. We have grown into a multifaceted agency that feeds, shelters, and arranges for each homeless person to receive the necessary access to social and noncompulsory religious services to enable a return to a self-reliant lifestyle. And for the small percentage of people incapable of living independent lives, we provide a caring and supportive environment for their long-term residency. Our Philosophy COSAC believes that to remain effective we must strive to remain flexible, and be ready to evolve to meet the needs of the homeless with equivalent services. Our Mission Statement To provide the homeless population access to shelter, food, employment opportunities or referrals, as well as access to social services all toward the aim of enabling their return, if possible, to self-reliance. To accomplish this COSAC is the hub organization. We developed the Homeless Voice newspaper, a COSAC funding tool, which has been responsible for employing homeless people and therefore giving them income to survive on the streets. Also, the “The Homeless Voice” is the means by which we advocate on behalf of the homeless population and to educate the public as to the true nature of homelessness and ways we can all work to eliminate the bias against this sector of our population and to help empower those affected by homelessness to regain or maintain their self-esteem and sense of self-worth during their transition through difficult times. The Homeless Voice became the official name of our homeless division, which operates four facilities in Broward County. We created the COSAC Quarters Hotel for the poor, a hotel with 21 rooms that serve the indigent or people with limited income. The clients receive three meals a day at Arnolds Café, named after the great homeless advocate Arnold Abbott. Another agency is the Day Labor Company, employees of which match an outside company labor request with a suitable shelter resident. Lastly, COSAC Foundation decided to become the South Florida County Food pantry. This service helps us provide food for those “nearly homeless” families. Our Vision To end discrimination against the homeless population and to develop such an effective network of services that we greatly reduce the time a person or family emerges out of homelessness back into self-reliance.
If you received this issue of the Homeless Voice in your mailbox please go to pg 4 We have an Emergency!
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The Homeless Voice World Edition 2013
Our Homeless Voice readers:
The Homeless Voice World Edition 2013
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We have an Emergency!
Dear Homeless Voice Readers: We are the small non-profit that runs the #1 emergency and response shelter in South Florida. We serve, house, and care for 500 homeless every day, and have costs like any other business: water, power, rent, programs, staff and legal help. The Homeless Voice is extremely effective. It is a place where anyone in need will get help. It is a safe place for people to go when they have nowhere else to turn. We take no government funds. We run on donations averaging about 33 cents. If everyone reading this paper gave the price of a cup of coffee, our fundraising would be done. If helping people is important to you as it is important for us, take one minute to go online to www.hvoice.org and become a monthly angel. $15 per month is what we need from You. Please help us forget fundraising and get back to Serving the Homeless. Thank you. Please visit: www.hvoice.org/member
We Have Been Removed From The Streets... For any new readers to our paper, I’d like to explain a little on how we support ourselves. We run on 100 % generosity of our readers. We are not funded through the government and depend solely on the communities we serve. Distributing the free Homeless Voice newspaper has been our way over the last ten years to collect donations while providing a job and money to the transients of South Florida. By not accepting government funding we are able to accept people of every age, race, criminal and mental background with no limitations on how long they can stay or how much we can help them. It is very important for us to bring the news to you as well so we can reduce the number of homeless people in the community. The more people who read our newspaper, the more we can educate and then help fix the problem of homelessness. However we are in serious danger of losing that freedom. More and more cities are taking our vending rights away while sending more people to our shelters. Our supplies are running low and our bills are piling up. If you have received this free issue in your mailbox, thank you for taking the time to read about us and the people who live here. We are a full service shelter and offer three meals a day, a bed to sleep in and the opportunity for counseling and assistance in applying for benefits and jobs. We offer much more and when the opportunity allows we often provide emergency assistance and aid in the surrounding area.We are in desperate need of people who can donate every month. We love vistors to come by and see what we are all about. Please see below on ways to donate, thank you!
Dr. Kent M. Keith
If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Do good anyway. If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies. Succeed anyway. The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway. Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable. Be honest and frank anyway. The biggest person with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest person with the smallest mind. Think big anyway. What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build anyway. People really need help but may attack if you help them. Help people anyway. Give the world the best you have and you might get kicked in the teeth. Give the world the best you've got anyway.
On Spirituality...Trust In the last edition I wrote about the spirituality of trust. That it was easier to trust in God than in each other, but that both were necessary to achieve true joy. I said that there were times in almost all of our lives where we had trusted another and been let down or betrayed, and that it was extremely difficult to get over that and trust again. I received a good amount of questioning as to how we might achieve this forgiving and trusting again without just being fools with our emotions. My humble response is this; life lived to the full is not possible without risk. We have to know that human beings are frail and subject to failure. Men and women make promises they have every intention of keeping and then we don’t. I think there is comfort in that knowledge. The joy of loving is worth the pain of loss. What we have to get better at is sharing both with our Lord. When we join our success in our human relationships to our relationship with God, we can’t lose. Our relationship with God is or can be rock steady, because God never disappoints and never changes. What happens in our life when we walk with the Lord is experienced by us and by God with us. We soar with the Lord and suffer with the Lord, life still has its ups and downs, but we are never alone and never without hope. Faith, hope and love, Saint Paul mentions these as the most important virtues and the greatest of these is love. I pray today that all who read this will trust in the Lord and from that trust will be courageous enough to love. Peace, Deacon Bob
Prayer for Religious Liberty O GOD OUR CREATOR, from your provident hand we have received our right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. You have called us as your people and given us the right and the duty to worship you, the only true God, and your Son, Jesus Christ. Through the power and working of your Holy Spirit, you call us to live out our faith in the midst of the world, bringing the light and the saving truth of the Gospel to every corner of society. We ask you to bless us in our vigilance for the gift of religious liberty. Give us the strength of mind and heart to readily defend our freedoms when they are threatened; give us courage in making our voices heard on behalf of the rights of your Church and the freedom of conscience of all people of faith. Grant, we pray, O heavenly Father, a clear and united voice to all your sons and daughters gathered in your Church in this decisive hour in the history of our nation, so that, with every trial withstood and every danger overcome — for the sake of our children, our grandchildren, and all who come after us — this great land will always be “one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.
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"Care to Help the Homeless?" Does your store, offfice, or place of business want to say, “Care to Help the Homeless?” We would like to offer you the chance to put our bucket and papers in your place of business so you can collect funds for us and then once every ten days we will be by to pick up the funds. This is to help us stay in business as the cites such as Miramar and Pembroke Pines make laws that no longer allow our paper to be sold on the streets. Please show your support in Helping the Homeless and “host” one of our buckets! Call 954-924-3571 for your bucket today!
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The Paradoxical Commandments
The Homeless Voice World Edition 2013
The Argentinian Cardboard Collector who is Good Friends with the Pope Maria Mansilla
Sergio Sanchez spends his days recycling rubbish on the streets of Buenos Aires. He belongs to the Excluded Workers Movement (MTE), an apolitical organization with more than 2000 members who work as urban recyclers in Argentina’s capital city. But Sanchez is now as famous in Argentina as the footballer Diego Maradona. His celebrity status came after he received a personal invitation to visit Rome for the inauguration of his friend, Pope Francis. In the Italian capital, Sanchez rubbed shoulders with world leaders and made history for cardboard collectors. How do you think the attention you’re getting after appearing next to Pope Francis in Rome will affect the Movement (MTE)? We would like people to see that MTE covers all the cooperatives of cardboard collectors. The thing that brings us together is our continuous fight for those who work independently, particularly for those who don’t have a voice. If we take having been in Rome and having been with Bergoglio out of the equation, our fight is for there to be no social exclusion. We’re not the owners, we can’t change the world, but we can take the first steps. That moment, on the balcony, on the left of the man we now know as Pope Francis, did you stay calm and take in what was happening or were you running on adrenaline? That was a moment to savour, a unique moment. I spent three days outside. What I actually saw was little but it was fantastic. I thought to myself where am I, what am I doing here? The thing that made me happiest was seeing the presidents and the royals pass by, they sat down far away, and we were there. It was a privilege. Something that can›t be explained. For us, being next to Bergoglio was something natural. When it (Continued on pg 9)
Art Helps Roma Children Dream Again in Hungary Krisztina Than
In a classroom in this impoverished corner of eastern Hungary, children draw pictures of an imaginary village filled with colorful houses where Roma and non-Roma families live in harmony and people have enough money to get by. When the class ends in the town of Berettyoujfalu, some 270 km east of the Hungarian capital, pupils go home to their real-life village, Told, where houses have no running water or sewage and illiteracy is often a problem among the mostly Roma families who live there. A small art class brings little change to the dire poverty that plagues hundreds of thousands of people in Hungary, but that does not stop a few activists from trying such programs in the most destitute areas of the country. A lucky few children do end up better off as a result. Istvan Otvos, 15, started drawing four years ago. Last year he and another pupil had a chance to go to Portugal where they won a prize at an international art contest. From September he hopes to enroll at one of Hungary’s best secondary schools, run by the Catholic church. “This is a fantasy bird, a kind of fairytale bird,” Otvos said, showing off his painting of a huge golden peacock-like bird depicted against a bright blue sky. “I’d like to make something better with my life through drawing,” he said with a timid smile. The Igazgyongy (Pearl) art education foundation, which teaches the art classes, tries to give Roma children like Otvos a chance to break out of hopeless poverty in families where generations grow up without seeing their parents work. In Told only 12 of the 354 local residents have jobs, and about 30 more are on state-run public works programs. In all, there are 670 children who learn to draw and paint in classes run by the Pearl foundation from two dozen nearby villages, including Told and the village of Hencida, where Otvos lives. More than two thirds come from underprivileged families. In the last census two years ago, 315,000 people in Hungary declared themselves Roma. But the actual size of the minority group is estimated at 700,000 in a population of 10 million.
Most of them live in poverty-stricken areas of eastern and southern Hungary. Prejudice and resentment against the Roma is widespread in the central European country and has been exacerbated by a Europe-wide economic crisis. “The biggest problem is that poverty has been accumulating for generations in these isolated pockets,” said Nora Ritok, who set up the foundation more than a decade ago. “We don’t want all 670 kids to become artists, that’s not our primary goal. The most important is whether we can help them develop their personalities in a way that builds self-esteem... and could strengthen their will and give them a goal in life.” BREAKING OUT Helena Szabo, 11, is one of six children in Told who receive a monthly grant of 10,000 forints ($45.60) from the foundation, which their families get in the last week of each month, providing the children attend school and the parents agree to cooperate with the foundation. By then, even buying basic foodstuffs is often a problem. Social workers help these families decide what the money could be best used for - food, clothing, or books. Besides the immediate financial help, the main goal is to help parents understand that going to school and studying is important and can be a way out of misery. “I will be a good student... and may become a florist, or a shop owner,” Szabo says, proudly showing her drawings. She lives in a house in Told which has no glass windows and the door is covered with a piece of cloth. The house had been so badly infested with rats that the foundation had to step in to help eradicate them. Ritok says for some time, she believed a good school could help work off some of the enormous disadvantages for children like Szabo. But she says a much more complex solution is needed to tackle the problems. The foundation is doing social work besides art education, and keeps in close contact with the children’s families. They collect and distribute charity aid, help families to get to the doctor if needed and have created a community house and garden where locals grow vegetables. Using the children’s drawings, local women make embroidered pillowcases and bags that are on sale in the shop of Budapest’s Museum of Ethnography. The children win hundreds of prizes in art contests at home and internationally each year, Ritok says. But she believes it would be a mistake to declare it a success if one or two Roma manage to get into higher education. “I’d say the real success is when it’s a case of 100 or 200 children...achieving some kind of positive change,” she said.
A small art class brings little change to the dire poverty that plagues hundreds of thousands of people in Hungary
From Slum Girl to World Chess Prodigy Ammy Fallon
Phiona Mutesi was a muddy, desperate nine-year-old foraging for food in Uganda’s biggest slum, Katwe, when she discovered, through her older brother Brian, a chess program. It was not pawns, rooks, bishops, knights or a king that drew her to a church verandah in Katwe, Kampala - it was what came with the lessons: a free bowl of porridge. “We didn’t have food. We were sleeping on the streets because we didn’t have the money to rent a house. It was a hard time,” says Mutesi, 17, whose father died of AIDS when she was three. “The pieces looked attractive to me. I didn’t want to learn the game. That time I just wanted to get a cup of porridge.” Mutesi was dirty and barefoot. The other children in the program, run by Robert Katende of Sports Outreach Institute, a Christian mission, told her to leave. “I didn’t feel bad because that’s the life in Katwe,” she tells IPS, speaking from the lounge in Katende’s house where she is currently staying. In the cabinet behind her, her trophies are piled high. “If you don’t fight you can’t get it.” Mutesi returned again and again to the chess program, but only for the free meal. “That’s when I got to practice and I got better. Then I got an interest in chess,” she says. “I like chess because it involves planning.” “The life I’ve been living, it also involved planning. When you’re living in a slum you also have to plan ahead: how am I going to get food tomorrow?” Chess had been introduced in this East African nation in the early 1970s by a group of doctors working at Mulago Hospital in Kampala, according to Christopher Turyahabwe, General Secretary of the Uganda Chess Federation. “They thought it would bring back reasoning,” Turyahabwe tells IPS. “Later on it spread through the army to help them plan strategy.” It was largely thanks to Father Damian Grimes, a former English principal who headed the progressive Namasagali College between 1967 and 2000, that the game was introduced into schools. Grimes started a Namasagali chess club, organizing tournaments with other schools. “At first we only had two or three or four visiting schools,” Grimes tells IPS. “We could not persuade any girls to take part.” “Gradually, however, things developed and by the late 1970s and early 1980s it had gone up to something like 30 or more visiting teams including girls.” A team consisted of four players and a school could send several teams to compete if they wanted. The competition became an annual chess festival, later named the Father Grimes Schools Tournament. Little did Grimes know when it began that more than two decades on a girl from Katwe slum and her team would take the title five times in a row. After winning her first Father Grimes Schools Tournament, Mutesi went to the 2009 International Children’s Chess Tournament in South Sudan. Her first time outside Uganda. Her first time on a plane. “Wow, I was so excited and couldn’t believe it, until we reached (our destination),” she recalls. “I thought we are near heaven.” Since then she has competed in two chess Olympiads in Siberia and Turkey. She was also named a Woman Candidate Master, the bottom-ranking title given by FIDE, the World Chess Federation, after last year’s event in Istanbul. She recently spoke at the Women in the World summit in New York, attended by Hillary Clinton and Oprah Winfrey. (Continued on pg 9)
“If you don’t fight you can’t get it.” - Phiona Mutesi
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World Edition
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The Homeless Voice World Edition 2013
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The Air he Breaths- Life with an Addicted Son Sybil Thomas
My son is struggling with heroin addiction. During the course of my own life I have attempted suicide once, battled post-natal depression, overcome a cocaine habit, ‘abused’ alcohol and been diagnosed with bipolar II. My son also has bipolar I, which is categorised by intense mania coupled with dizzying lows. I call him my mad son. He calls me his crazy mother. We are an irreverent sort of family that is kept afloat by our communal sense of humour. We aren’t the Brady Bunch, but we aren’t that unusual either. I lie awake every night, hyper-vigilant for flashing lights from the window or a muffled knock at the door. The police. “Ma’am, we have some bad news.” Two years of nights like this and I’m starting to wonder if they haven’t already been and I’m living in a hopeful delusion. I’ve dreamed of giving my son’s eulogy, a big screen behind me flashing pictures of his sunny youth and wobbly teethed smiles. A sun-tanned little I sipped bubbles with my girlfriends. blond boy with eyes sparkling into the future. When he opened up and told me about his addiction two years The last time I saw my son, I didn’t recognize him ago, the bottom dropped out of my world. It was as if he had and had to bite my lip to stop from crying. We live told me he had a terminal illness, and in many ways he does. a thousand kilometres apart, and yet through his adThe truth is that he must kill heroin or it will kill him. Maybe diction and his struggle to peel its claws from him, next month, maybe tonight. He is in a battle to the death. we have become closer than ever. My son is warm Of course I blamed myself. But my other boys were fine. The and gentle and confused about how he managed to go mates who had led my son into the haunted forest of addicfrom straight edge to addict in only a few years. “It tion also came from good homes with loving parents. Heroin is like being deprived of air,” he tells me as he cries doesn’t just target ‘losers’. It’s as if I am into the telephone, begging me perched on the edge of a precipice waitfor a few dollars. I feel powerThe mates who had led my ing for that fall. My son’s addiction has less, sitting here in the waiting room of grief. I give him small son into the haunted forest of infected me and I am obsessed with his need to recover. Obsessed and also helpamounts. Hoping it is for food or replacement medication and addiction also came from good less. And behind it all there is the guilt that nothing worse. homes with loving parents. I somehow caused it all. Every time I read another He has been in an outpatient clinic heartbreaking tale of an overprogram of drug replacement therapy for some months. These dose and a mother’s devastation, I feel like vomiting. drugs are destroying his teeth and causing other unpleasant My son is 23. Handsome. Funny. Intelligent. Loving. side effects. Each day he lines up with other junkies for a cup The thought of losing him to drugs never entered my of relief from the pain of withdrawal. He works casually, but head during his teenage years. He was a staunch little finds it hard to hold down a job. The clinic charges him $11 a anti-drugs campaigner not unlike Saffy from Absoday, which is difficult to find when you are reliant on Centrelutely Fabulous, and the parallel was not lost on me as
link payments. The program offers him some stability and he has not used heroin for six months. The plan is to taper him off the replacement by November. “You can’t understand the circle of hell unless you’ve been there,” he says sadly. I want to take away his pain and make everything alright, but this is his journey and he must fight heroin alone. It’s between him and the drug. They are in a toxic relationship and I can only stand by and offer my love, encouragement and prayers. And listen in a non-judgmental way. I don’t know what else to do. I love him. That’s all I have. Right now he has some work and a girlfriend, and the future is becoming more of a possibility for him. He’s picked up a pen and begun to write of his struggle. It is therapeutic. He sounds happy. Hopeful. I embrace my own hope like a long-lost child. But my relief that he is moving in the right direction is shallow, because I know how easy it is to slip, to fall back. That very slide has seen the death of some of his close friends, and each time I hear that bell toll…
Remember each day at 3pm, say this prayer
The Argentinian Cardboard Collector who is Good Friends with the Pope
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was announced he was to be Pope, we thought that that was the end of our closeness, it would have been impossible for the whole group to go to the Vatican. There’s a lot of talk about “a church for the poor” these days. What does that mean to you? There’s not a lot I can say, the only thing I can do is think that yes, it’s true, there’s a lot of poor people. The difference with being a cardboard collector or a seamstress is that it doesn’t mean you’re poor, but rather humble, and that you want to improve but it’s difficult to make that improvement in life, to become middle class. That’s one way to say that it’s a church for the humble, for those who don’t have a say in things, for those who don’t have any way to express themselves... What do the members of the MTE believe in? In God, in some Saint, in a political leader, in their jobs, in nothing...? Many of the cardboard collectors are Catholic, others follow other religions. It’d be wrong to say we are the ground. devoted to one church. A humble person today thinks How old are you? about being able to work, he prays to himself. Believ49. ing in God doesn’t mean following a church, it means One of the projects of the MTE is the nursey for the chilcarrying Him with you inside. When Bergoglio used dren of cardboard collectors, to ensure they’re well taken to hold mass in Constitución, we expected him to care of. What was your childhood like? bless us in our jobs and in our day to day lives. Both I had a normal childhood, the usual; like everyone, there was cardboard workers and seamstresses alike, workers bad behaviour at school... I was born in Mar Del Playa and in recovered factories, farmers, all of us began to put when I was nine I came here. My father died and when I was across the idea of coming together to defend the prinlittle we sold books in Palmero. And in Rivadavía Park I sold ciples of working with dignity and prevent the social rubber stamps and little boxes of imported matches. That’s how exclusion of any class. it started. We had a normal life, a job. When you were in the The difference with being a I started working as a cardboard colVatican, were you able to speak to any presidents or cardboard collector or a seamstress lector after the crisis in 2001. I was in monarchs? Did anyone ap- is that it doesn’t mean you’re poor, Almagro. I always say that there are cardboard collectors who have been proach you? there much longer than me. But anybut rather humble, and that you want No, it was something incredible, new... I didn’t to improve but it’s difficult to make way, they were people who couldn’t be bothered fighting for it. We started speak to anyone. But José, that improvement in life, to become to get together thanks to the help from the schoolteacher who also the group Los Cinco Locos. middle class. came, and I were some of the Who are Los Cinco Locos? first to greet Bergoglio, now Five activists who wanted to help the cardboard collectors Francis. We thought to ourselves: cardboard collecsettle down. They were determined to help us. And I think they tors are going to make the history books. reached their goal and they did it. What is Buenos Aires like from your point of This year marks 30 years of democracy. Just a little while view? ago it was the 10th anniversary of the crisis of the 1990´s There’s a lot of mess, and it’s easy to blame the cardand 2000´s. You also managed to organise yourselves and board collectors but it’s difficult to blame the people carve out a decent living. who are starving that burst a rubbish bag to be able It was difficult, people didn’t believe we could. I don’t know to eat. I wish people would separate damp things anything about politics but I know how to work. Because of from dry things, that way many cardboard collectors the bad hands that are dealt in life, many cardboard collectors wouldn’t create such a mess, they would have less have degrees, but couldn’t make anything of them. But there rubbish and the environment would be better taken are many cardboard collectors who don’t know how to read, care of. We consider ourselves to be the best carers how to write, but they do know how to think very well. And of the environment: by filling a bag with 100kg of they want a very good future for us. rubbish, it means that 100kg less ends up buried in
From Slum Girl to World Chess Prodigy (Continued from pg 7)
In the United States, Mutesi also played her hero, grandmaster Garry Kasparov, one of the game’s greatest champions of the 20th century. Bill Gates has reportedly asked to play her and Disney is in the early stages of production of a movie on her life. One U.S. school has even started a tournament in her name. “I found out about the world. I found out about things going on in the world, that it was more than Katwe,” Mutesi says of the opportunities chess has given her. “I was only thinking how can I manage to get something to eat. But now I’ve got hope of becoming a grandmaster, a doctor, even building an orphanage for slum kids.” “I never believed I’d become an inspiration to other people.” Before Mutesi began attending St. Mbuga Vocational Secondary School in Makindye, Kampala, on a full scholarship, there were only four female players. Now there are over 50 and chess is a compulsory subject at the school. Ivy Amoko, 26, started playing chess in December 2007. “I was bored. I used to play more active games,” the law graduate from Mbuya, Kampala, tells IPS. “I tried soccer, I tried volleyball. “It (chess) is fun. It’s not something that depends on my physical ability.” Today Mutesi is the Ugandan national ladies’ captain. She has competed in two Olympiads and the World University Games. “The common factor that we all have is chess, irrespective of the ages,” says Amoko, who is on her way to a karaoke night out in Kampala with other UCF members. “I like the kind of association that it creates. Phiona is 17 years old but we have a common ground. There’s a number of girls and the number’s growing.”
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The Homeless Voice World Edition 2013
If you received this issue of the Homeless Voice in your mailbox please go to pg 4 We have an Emergency!
(Continued from pg 7)
The Homeless Voice World Edition 2013
10
Cairo’s poor converts kitchen waste into fuel savings Cam McGrath
The bio-gas digester on the roof of Hussein Farag’s apartment in one of Cairo’s poorest districts provides a daily supply of cooking gas produced from the kitchen waste his family would otherwise discard in plastic bags or empty into the clogged sewer below his building. Constructed of two large plastic tubs and mostly recycled materials, the zero-emissions bio-gas unit saves his family about LE 20 (three U.S. dollars) a month in gas bills. And in the ramshackle Darb ElAhmar district where Farag lives, that works out to nearly a day’s wage. Farag’s bio-gas digester converts organic waste fed into its 1,000-litre plastic tank into methane gas that can be used to heat water or cook food. Ordinary kitchen waste - everything from food scraps, to stale tea and mouldy bread - is soaked overnight in water to soften, then poured into the tank’s bacteria-rich soup to decompose. A pipe carries the methane gas produced to the family’s kitchen stove. “I just empty my kitchen waste into it, but anything organic will work as feedstock,” Farag told IPS. The digester produces about two hours of gas a day in the summer, and slightly less in the cooler winter Pigs were the linchpin of Cairo’s traditional waste managemonths, according to Farag. Every week he drains a ment system, consuming up to a third of the 20 tonnes of daily few litres of dark effluent from the tank. waste produced by the city’s 18 million residents. Without “I bottle the residue and sell it as organic fertiliser to them, the volume of “wet” waste has swollen, clogging sewers garden shops,” he explains. and landfills and piling high in city streets and empty lots. Farag says the unit, which he The rotting heaps of organic rubbish atbuilt for less than LE 1,000 in tract flies and rats, creating vectors for disShortages of imported butane 2008 (180 U.S. dollars at the time), ease. have resulted in long queues at requires virtually no maintenance, distribution outlets. Disputes over Farag says initial support and funding as it has no mechanical parts. for building bio-gas digesters came from cylinders have even “Egypt needs a system like this, Solar CITIES, a non-profit initiative to debecause there is a lot more orled to fatalities. velop sustainable energy solutions for lowganic waste now that all the pigs income families. The non-governmental are gone,” he says, referring to the nation-wide pig organisation (NGO) helped build more than half a dozen biocull that the Egyptian government carried out in April gas units in Cairo, as well as rudimentary solar water heaters 2009 in a knee-jerk reaction to the swine flu pandemic. constructed from local recycled materials, before its funding
dried up. “Most families produce enough kitchen waste each day to produce enough gas to meet all their cooking and water needs,” Hanna Fathy says, (Solar CITIES coordinator. Fathy, currently working on environmental projects outside Egypt, says the government’s energy subsidies discourage Egyptians from investing in sustainable energy solutions. Recovering the initial capital cost of a bio-gas digester can take up to ten years but would take just one year if subsidies were dropped. “The government doesn’t provide incentives for families to switch to clean energy, so they stick with the cheapest short-term solution, which is to buy gas cylinders, (which are bad for the environment and have a tendency to explode.)” Fathy told IPS.
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11 The Homeless Voice World Edition 2013
If you received this issue of the Homeless Voice in your mailbox please go to pg 4 We have an Emergency!