Braincandy on a new reality
Recently I was invited to express my views about the United Nations millenium goals as a 5 minute braincandy for the world. I choose two issues, inequality and poverty, to make my point that such issues cannot be solved by the political and economic hierarchies that produce the issues in the first place. We need to accept and introduce a new reality, which exists and expands worldwide…..
Wedowe’s BRAINCANDIES:
“If we produce our own food, then maybe we can become more resilient as human beings. So we do, here in Eindhoven. We produce with permaculture, with aquaponics, with all kind of systems, we are inviting people to socially engage with their own food production.”
According to Jean-Paul, there wouldn’t be any inequality or poverty in the world if we would structure our community around social inclusion rather than economic or political exclusion.
Enjoy Jean-Paul’s #BRAINCANDIES titled: “A totally new reality”.
FRE2SH food resilience demonstrated
During DDW2017 (Dutch Design Week 2017) in Eindhoven we had the opportunity to open the doors of our food resilience initiative, referred to as the FRE2SH cooperative (Food, Recreation, Energy, Education, Sustainocracy, Health).Over 4500 visitors came to see the FRE2SH ecosystem in which various businesses connect to share food responsibilities in town. Such partners are forming a community relationship between city food production, consumption and food processing activities.Currently FRE2SH provides different types of herbs, lettuce, flowers, mealworms, oyster mushrooms, water Kefir, trout…Some of these products are processed into salades, soups, brownies, hamburgers, etc.There is a zero waste policy in which solutions are designed to reuse all nutrients in the chain. Also residues like plastic, coffee, etc are reused. Transportation is done on foot or by bicycle to avoid air pollution.
Slums in Bangalore
Christ University, Bangalore. Known for their responsible recycling through the Parivarthana waste management unit, where they collect and sort their waste. The waste is being used for sales, making compost bio-gas and the main focus is recycling paper waste into new products. ‘As students Industrial Product Engineering our objective is to design new products for the Parivarthana waste management unit.’
There are 22 people working at the Parivarthana waste management unit; 1 supervisor, 1 manager and 20 hand workers who are mostly women from the slums. By designing new products it is important to involve the people working at the waste management unit and let them participate, the target group (students and staff) have to be involved and the products have to be designed with the capabilities available.
The students from the HAN university of applied science, are also involved in the Slum LR Nagar. At the transit school in the slum the basics are provided for the drop out students. Basics conduct counting and the alphabet, subtractions and additions, Hindi, Canada and English. ‘One day per week we provide English and Math classes at the transit school which is definitely a challenge for us and gets us out of our comfort zone due to the lack of professional background.’
To get an insight view upon the Bangalore life, check this movie:
