Gaia Desert

I'm at KALLPA in Lima Peru.  We are listening to Dr. André deQuadros discuss "theatre of the oppressed" and how theatre is used as a big structure for our work in public health. Theatre allows us to create the structure with all other arts.  Why the arts? Its part of human life.    Provides an imaginary space where people can invent their solutions.    This is from Theatre of the oppressed website :  Theatre of the Oppressed is the Game of Dialogue: we play and learn together. All kinds of Games must have Discipline - clear rules that we must follow. At the same time, Games have absolute need of creativity and Freedom. TO is the perfect synthesis between the antithetic Discipline and Freedom. Without Discipline, there is no Social Life; without Freedom, there is no Life. Dr. De Quadros emphasized how actors are the interface we have between our public health project and the community. Using a theatre program can provoke imagination, create inve

Does the community led total sanitation scheme work? http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2011/may/30/mdg-sanitation-offtrack-but-community-led-approach-is-working

I found this video yesterday on greywater. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1DfNlxlk-A&feature=feedf  There is lots of support for this out there.  I was most excited to find detail of what they do with their indoor washing machines. L2L3way-labels.preview.jpg This is all from greywateraction.org .

http://www.npr.org/2011/04/11/135241362/the-worldwide-thirst-for-clean-drinking-water Reposting from Michael E. Campana's  tweet , author of   WaterWired .

Finally, a website summarizing all of that water-related psuedoscience! http://www.chem1.com/CQ/gallery.html Here in Loma Linda, there is someone who actively promotes a "Japanese Water Technology" which has the therap eutic ability to treat "arthritis, diabetes, low energy, premature aging, high cholesterol and even cancer." This is most likely a member of the alkaline water craze category of water-bunk pseudoscience quackery that  Professor  Stephen Lower  of  Simon Fraser University  eloquently describes in his website .  

Nov 19th, 2011 is   World Toilet Day ! A lack of proper sanitation affects 2.6 billion people, almost half the worlds population. A lack of proper sanitation hurts women and girls more than men and boys.

See this recent article in the Guardian about Voluntourism :  "Before you pay to volunteer abroad, think of the harm you might do" The PEPY group in Cambodia turned me on to this. The article references a report by the Human Science Research Council Report I n recent decades, the tourism industry has thrived, grown and diversified to encompass a wide array of travel activities, with alternative volunteer tourism leading the way. Well-to-do tourists enrol for several weeks at a time to build schools, clean and restore river banks, ring birds and other useful activities in mostly poor but exotic settings. AIDS orphan tourism has become a niche market, contributing to the growth of the tourism industry. AIDS orphans ‘have economic valence' and ‘orphanhood is a globally circulated commodity', as some researchers have phrased it. I am a supporter of "fun tourism". An old concept that our productive society seems to have forgotten. Eco-tourism, "