VAMOS COLOMBIA
After more than 50 years of conflict how do you get a country that for centuries has been divided by class to understand that peace has to be built by all? As part of USAID’s funding for peace building initiatives in Colombia we create a model for corporate volunteers to spend time and considerable effort working on projects that will benefit communities in the most affected regions of Colombia by violence and war. We organize between 100 and 500 volunteers from the private sector to share their efforts and their stories with communities, often in remote regions where the illegal armed actors used to reign supreme. The interactions help the communities as we build community centers and infrastructure they desperately needed, but they transform the volunteers, who leave understanding what peace building will take and how humanity is not about how different we are, but about how far we have grown apart for no real reason.
Responsible for: Concept, Design & Initial implementation
LOS GAITEROS
DE SAN JACINTO
Where the Andes begin to die and the Colombian Caribbean plains start unfolding towards the ocean, one of the most extraordinary sounds of traditional music was born. It combine wind and percussion instruments inherited from the indigenous groups, the Spaniards and the slaves brought from Africa. The Gaiteros de San Jacinto are the prime exponents of this music, their members are powerful defenders of their tradition and communities in this remote region and we were able to provide management and knowledge to help them break into an international stage, taking them to concerts around the world, executive production of their album “Un Fuego de Sangre Pura” taken under the wing of the Smithsonian Institute’s Folkways Recordings and eventually winning a Latin Grammy Award in Las Vegas in 2011.
Responsible for: Executive Production (album); US Tour Producers
BIOCONSTRUCTION
One should practice what you preach. Examples are often the best way to encourage a change in behavior and we applied the lessons we had learnt when building our own home. Using sustainable building techniques developed by Earthship in the USA during the 1960s and 70s, we created a project to build a home in the outskirts of Bogota using international volunteers and the local community to build using recycling materials such as tires and bottles. The project has been visited by over 4,000 people and has been featured in many national and international media reports and the techniques used are now being implemented by those that decided to follow our example. We now lead a local team of Bioconstructors that have built more than ten of these structures from community centers, to agricultural terraces, to private residences.