Green Belt Movement

Anant d'aquí a allà,  darrera la pista d'un pintor que no coneixia    -Josep Benlliure  (1855- 1937)-   he acabat tafanejant en la web d'un Institut de Secundària del País Valencià  (l'IES Benlliure),  i ,  com qui no vol la cosa,  he trobat un enllaç a la pàgina del  GREEN BELT MOVEMENT.  I allà m'ha sortit això:

He copiat de la web principal uns quants paragrafs que expliquen la història d'aquesta iniciativa liderada per la kenyata Wangari Maathai  (Premi Nobel de la Pau de l’any 2004):

“The Green Belt Movement (GBM) was founded by Professor Wangari Maathai in 1977 under the auspices of the National Council of Women of Kenya (NCWK) to respond to the needs of rural Kenyan women who reported that their streams were drying up, their food supply was less secure, and they had to walk further and further to get firewood for fuel and fencing. GBM encouraged the women to work together to grow seedlings and plant trees to bind the soil, store rainwater, provide food and firewood, and receive a small monetary token for their work.
Shortly after beginning this work, Professor Maathai saw that behind the everyday hardships of the poor—environmental degradation, deforestation, and food insecurity—were deeper issues of disempowerment, disenfranchisement, and a loss of the traditional values that had previously enabled communities to protect their environment, work together for mutual benefit, and to do both selflessly and honestly. The Green Belt Movement instituted seminars in civic and environmental education, now called Community Empowerment and Education seminars (CEE), to encourage individuals to examine why they lacked agency to change their political, economic, and environmental circumstances. Participants began to understand that for years they had been placing their trust in leaders who had betrayed them and that they were sabotaging their lives by not working for the common good and failing to use their natural resources wisely”.

La coincidència extraordinària és que les pintures de Josep Benlliure m'interessàven casualment a arrel d'un seguit de plantacions que pensem fer dins del Projecte Montbau Eix i Creix,  que tracta sobretot de realitzar plantacions veïnals amb la força del voluntariat.  De sobte,  i després de veure el que significa el moviment Green Belt,  la nostra possible intervenció a base de plantacions pren un altre sentit i,  per moments,  s'enlaira com envoltada de màgia...

Obres de Josep Benlliure i Gil