This year's Goldman Prize winners for protecting the environment are some truly awesome folks. Here's just a peek at the latest.
I admit I'm a latecomer to these yearly awards to one outstanding activist for every continent (excepting Antarctica; no one will ever fight the cold and win) -- my boss was a winner in 1990 and so she introduced me. But they're so cool, I have to spread the word!
Africa: Feliciano dos Santos
As founder of the group Estamos (Portuguese for We are), Feliciano spreads the message of sanitation through his music and community empowerment through an invention:
EcoSans, or ecological sanitary composting toilets with a final product suitable for fertilizing crops.
Dos Santos' band Massukos is also internationally reknown - they're quite good! - for connecting villagers with his message through their culture and hopes for a safer, healthier, more plentiful future. Now that is some grooving appropriate technology.
South America and Central America: Pablo Fajardo Mendoza and Luis Yanza
These two have been fighting a big opponent in what is essential an Ecuadorian environmental justice fight: Texaco/Chevron's wanton destruction of Amazonian rainforest through years of irresponsible petroleum practices. A biographic article on Mendoza's life struggle blew me away because it seems like the man never sleeps. He was pursuing a law degree through a correspondance course while teaching, leading a community organizing group, raising and protecting his family from corporate provocateurs/hitmen, and running a daily radio show. Now, he's leading a 30,000-person class action suit against the oil tycoons for destruction of natural resources, water, and just about everything else near the drilling sites, including the health of the very people who toiled to bring the corporation big profits through the fossil fuels they piped away to first-world consumers.
You can check out the rest of the winners at the Goldman Prize website.
Note: I originally started to write this about a month ago, but for some reason put it off for a while. Sorry for the long absence!
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