Our initiative is to promote the co-creation of sustainable changes, thus fighting for a world with less suffering and more peace. We seek to develop viable solutions to various problematic situations facing the country. To better understand what we want, the solutions we propose, it is first necessary to understand these problematic situations.
FOOD INSECURITY AND PROBLEMS RELATED TO AGRO-CHEMICALS
A report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization considers Venezuela among the countries with the highest risk in food security. According to the director of Fedeagro (Confederation of Associations of Agricultural Producers of Venezuela), this situation will not improve since “in the Venezuelan countryside it is only produced to cover the needs of 10% of the national consumption and there is no money to buy the treated seeds and pesticides”. Which results in the fact that, due to low production and decreases in imports, 94% of the Venezuelan population does not have enough income to pay the prices of a food basket and basic services. This situation of food instability worsens due to the type of economic and agricultural model, since this depends entirely on oil so that there is production and distribution in the national territory. This dependence leads to the fact that many times, despite having crops, they cannot reach the cities because of fuel shortages. The lack of food results in a rise in malnutrition levels in the country and in infant mortality. According to the report “The State of Food Security and Nutrition” of 2017, FAO notes that Venezuela is the country with the highest increase in the number of undernourished, going from 2.8 million with undernourishment in 2015, to 4, 1 million in 2016. As can be seen today in Venezuela the right to adequate food is not guaranteed. Many Venezuelans do not have access to all three meals a day and cases of malnutrition continue to increase.
The fight against food insecurity also implies fighting against those poisons we ingest daily. Food security cannot be achieved at the price of pollution and population poisoning. Although there are currently less agrochemicals in Venezuela because of their high cost, it is important to keep in mind that they generate serious problems for the environment and our health. In fact, they are also found in imported food that abounds in the country, and those who still have the money buy them. Another negative effect is that dependence on these products generates a culture of agro-toxics. Therefore, it is difficult for farmers to maintain production with less chemical inputs since they do not know how to do it. These two problematic situations, food insecurity and agro-toxic are thus intertwined.
With regard to health, according to a study carried out by the UN, «Pesticides are responsible for around 200,000 cases of poisoning deaths per year.» According to this institution, and many journalistic and scientific surveys, in addition to directly damaging human health, also greatly damage environmental health. Pesticides can remain in the environment for decades, which means a global threat to the planet’s ecological systems. Studies have shown that chronic poisonings and exposures at lower doses are associated with respiratory problems, memory disorders, skin diseases, depression, abortions, birth defects, cancer and neurological diseases such as Parkinson’s disease.
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In view of the mentioned situations, and within the framework of seeking to satisfy our basic needs in a sustainable way, this project proposes a program of organic vegetable gardens. We want to help through the donation of seeds, tools or just with labor in the creation of family, community or institution gardens. With the purpose of improving the quality of life of people by contributing to the increase of their food self-sufficiency and to have healthy and local food access.
Through this project we also want to propose the start of a campaign for food justice, promoting critical thinking about this issue and at the same time raising awareness about the need to achieve food sovereignty. The crisis also leads us to recognize the need not only to provide sustainable solutions, such as work in organic vegetable gardens, but also to provide humanitarian support in the food area, donating healthy food to people in need, while encouraging the importance of eating Healthy and organic food. We hope to be able to donate healthy food to institutions such as hospitals, orphanages or homeless people. The idea at first would be to make donations twice a month and possibly, if there are enough donations, get to do it once a week.
These are broad problems that have generated the current situation, and we are aware that to achieve significant changes, steps must be taken for structural changes. If we have understood the diagnosis, that food insecurity is synonymous with oil dependence and dependence on imports (also import of all inputs for industrial agriculture) we have to find another way for the right to food, to healthy eating we can add (in a healthy environment) that do not depend on fossil energies or imports.
Working against malnutrition and in favor of food security is going to the root of the problem. Food security and good food (which has to do with good agriculture) are the basis for ensuring the health and well-being of people. And the way to achieve this food security and collective well-being is through organic agriculture, both urban and local, to reduce dependence on fossil fuels. Thanks to this type of agriculture we could achieve our self-sufficiency, even obtaining much better harvest results than with conventional agriculture. According to a 2011 report by the United Nations (UN), «Agroecology can double world food production» thus addressing climate change and environmental problems. In the same way, this type of agriculture can help us prevent pesticide-related diseases in our food.
GARBAGE IN THE STREETS AND SOIL FERTILITY.
According to the non-governmental organization VITALIS, “garbage became the third Venezuelan environmental problem in 2016, due to poor management systems that have failed to reduce the amount of waste and waste produced by Venezuelans.” Venezuela not only does not have adequate treatment systems but also the situation in the country has led to failures in the garbage collection service which causes it to end up many times in the streets of our cities, putting health at risk. Garbage in the streets generates bad smells and proliferation of flies turning our environment into dirty and neglected cities. In cities like Maracaibo and San Francisco, the accumulation of garbage has even generated outbreaks of vomiting and diarrhea, says the polyclinic infectologist Luis Razetti del Zulia, Florenzo Cudde. The doctor explains that these diseases «are affecting children and adults and are caused by an» enterovirus «caused by the proliferation of flies that surround the large concentrations of waste in the city,» according to a report published by the newspaper Panorama.
By throwing our waste into the streets, not only is unhealthiness increased, but we lose the opportunity to return to the earth what it gives us, we move away from returning its fertility back. Experts warn in a report made for the UN that the continuous degradation of soils (and loss of fertility would be one of the most important types of degradation) endangers food security, destroys biodiversity and aggravates global warming. According to FAO, soil degradation poses a growing threat to agricultural production. In fact there are already declines in yields, a very serious problem as well as those caused by other forms of environmental degradation. An example of this in Venezuela can be seen in the Guárico state where the management of monocultures and extensive livestock has brought various problems in soil fertility and incidence in the low quality of pastures, which in turn has influenced the low agricultural production in the region (see the guide: “The interactions of agroecology”). The French scientist Alexis Carrel, Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1912, explained how the soil is the basis for human life: “our only hope for a healthy world is the restoration of harmony in the soil that we have disrupted with agronomic modern methods. Our life – he said – will be healthy or sickly according to the fertility of the soil, since directly or indirectly, all food comes from the soil ”. But today, the soils are tired, over cultivated, exhausted, sick and poisoned by synthetic chemicals.
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The purpose of this project is also to help families that are affected by the mentioned problems, to help them in a sustainable and ecological way, through the creation of solar ovens, efficient stoves, water collection systems, ecological storage tanks or ecological water filters. Modes of sustainable life that would not only allow people to meet their basic needs at the moment but in a sustainable way. We do it this way to defend the right to life, to dignified life, continuously over time. We favor a new culture. Instead of the culture of waste, we promote a culture of sustainability through aid with sustainable methods, which would allow us to better protect the environment
(MIS) INFORMATION AND PUBLICITY AGAINST CRITICAL AWARENESS
The situation in Venezuela also hits the press, and with it, information and critical power. In 2018, up to 26 newspapers disappeared and 20 closed permanently. Nowadays you hardly get newspapers. Less space for the press is less democracy, and of course, less information accessible to the population about what is happening in the country. We notice that there is a strong political polarization in the country and it is also perceived in the press, and in society in general.
The situation is blocked because of that, there is less information and what comes out is partisan information. This camper information seeks to validate more what the government does, for example, than to inform. Free expression, without labeling or ideological prejudice is scarce as are the non-aligned cultural or political activities where we could group together to reflect, comment and criticize. It is difficult to act like this, (to think) freely, since we are in a place already ideologically marked. The discourse is taken in a network of constraints and our life is inscribed in a space that influences us. There are marks in us of thousands of advertisements that we can see daily. Our imaginary is already full, and it continues to be filled based on what the anonymous market and development (advertising) spokespersons, or information professionals (mass media) consider useful.
Advertising acts on us in a repetitive way, and in that it is violent, since with this repetition something of us is sought, just as with the media, beyond informing, they look for something from us: that we buy such a thing, that we think in such a way. They can thus become tools of domestication. They harm free will and pollute life by their imposed slogans (about what has to do with beauty, rightness, achievement, etc.). While the producer does not buy what he did, and the consumer does not do what he buys, advertising unifies this exploded reality, trying in different ways – but always polluting – to create the union between demand and supply.
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This project proposes a program that seeks to foster the critical thinking that we need so much. The program “becoming agents of sustainable changes” will be carried out through workshops, debates, shared readings, films, among others. Considering that the reduction of the press and its polarization weakened critical thinking, we want to look for another combination, for collective reflection, testimonies, workshops, debates. The idea is to recover our own thinking, our own voice, to do useful things that improve our situation, approaching a Venezuela with less suffering and more peace. For that, we also want to analyze and resist advertising aggression, thus defending the environment, the word, and us, as free beings.
The practice enlightens the conscience but we still need to train as conscious beings. We need the practice and also the development of critical thinking because the two feed and allow sustainable changes. It is through this combined process (theory and practice) that we can consider a common salvation. We will also create, for example, Popular Planet, a magazine to think and change the order of things.
THE ROOTS OF UNHAPPINESS
The Declaration of Human Rights has fifty-eight articles. But in our relationship with others, there is an article that summarizes them all, that is, that nobody wants to suffer and that others want – and have the same right as us – to be happy. This simple statement ultimately summarizes the entire Declaration of Human Rights. Matthieu Ricard
French geneticist and monk Matthieu Ricard reminds us that the main purpose for which we fight for human rights is because we all want to be happy. In fighting for human rights, we do it because we believe that for a society to function better, we should all have the opportunity to reach a level of well-being and inner peace that will lead us to live a fruitful life. Throughout history many have wondered how that well-being is achieved, that inner peace. From the investigations carried out in relation to this matter it is important to highlight that it has been shown that unlike what can be believed, money does not determine the level of well-being or happiness of a person. Studies in developed countries have shown that although people have more money their levels of happiness have not increased. In countries such as the United States or England, trends in depression, alcoholism and suicide rates have increased despite their economic development. And although poverty levels affect happiness levels, research has shown that mental illnesses are the main causes of suffering in the world, says Richard Layard, a professor at the London School of Economics, who explains that “mental problems are an important cause of unhappiness however if the individual is employed and receives a decent salary ”
By learning a little bit more about mental illnesses, we can see that psychological factors are among its main causes, such as destructive thinking patterns and difficulty in managing feelings. Emotional and social deficiencies, according to writer Daniel Goleman, are not only related to mental health problems (anxiety, stress, depression, eating disorders) but also to serious social problems such as decreased cognitive ability, divorce and suicide rates , chronic diseases, violence, loneliness, alcoholism and drug addiction. It is important to highlight, as Daniel Goleman points out, that insisting on the importance of becoming aware of emotional and social deficiencies is not intended to underestimate the role played by other risk factors, such as poverty, which can lead to many mental diseases or various social problems. Because of that, the author emphasizes – and we agree with his clarification – “that one of the levels of intervention must be political and economic, trying to alleviate both poverty and the rest of the social conditions that engender these problems.” But In addition to these interventions, there are other possible alternatives to help people overcome the problematic situations they face, situations often caused due to emotional or mental imbalance in their lives.
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This project not only seeks help that basic needs are met in a sustainable way, since we are aware that to create a world with less suffering and more peace, much more is needed than just the fact that our basic needs are covered. We are aware of the role that destructive emotions and destructive thoughts play in our lives. Emotions determine the quality of our lives. They can save us, but they can also cause real harm. In view of this, through this project and within the aforementioned program «becoming agents of sustainable changes» it is proposed to foster the cultivation of inner peace, through workshops that foster emotional and mental balance. We will seek to share tools designed to help us manage our emotions and feelings so that it is not they who determine our actions but that we ourselves are consciously deciding how to act in the face of certain situations that life presents us. Similarly, we will seek to provide tools that allow us to be more aware of our thoughts and how to stop those destructive thoughts that cause us suffering.
In the future it is also expected to be able to share non-violent communication workshops, since we are also aware of the importance of social relationships in well-being, and the importance of these being healthy and lasting. Through non-violent communication, we will seek to provide tools that allow us to create stronger and healthier social bonds, whether with friends, couples, family or colleagues. All this with the aim of being able to co-create that world we are looking for, one with less suffering and more peace.
CO-CREATING SUSTAINABLE CHANGES 