Recycling with the Green Project

For those of you who know me well, you will know how excited I am to be part of a new recycling program that my friend Diane is trying to start up in our area. If she can get 20 households to commit to recycling their plastics, carboard, paper and glass, as well as electronics and old household items/clothes, then a truck from the Green Project will come out to our area and collect our recycling. How exciting is that???!!! We went into Jakarta Friday with her Toyota Avanza stuffed with peoples' recycling. The most exciting thing about our trip was where we had to take it. It was to a compound that is home to a large group of street kids who have been given the chance at a new life. Let me tell you about this place in a nutshell.

There is a group of adults and children who go out and recruit street kids who have no one and no where to go, and they bring them to this compound. Here they receive food and clothes and begin a long process of adaptation and going beyond survival. There are various specific stages of development that they are introduced to, the first being the obvious: basic communication, awareness of others around them, basic hygiene. Once they get used to living with others they are introduced to basic education and greater hygiene and ultimately they are just loved on. If they choose to stay and haven't run away at this point (and I think that the staying success rate is about 80%) they have the opportunity to get an education, learn how to take care of themselves, their clothes and their living space. They are no longer able to stay once they turn 18, but the goal of the organization is to have given each child training in some area/vocation, such as retail sales, mechanics, computer repairs, cooking, recycling, etc.

Our part in this grand scheme is to provide the recycling for the children to sort, which then gets sold for a price, and the money earned goes towards the cost of keeping the children fed, clothed, educated and given the opportunity for outings and small trips. When I toured the area I was very impressed by the gardens they've started (nutritional deposits supplied by a small cache of rabbits in cages nearby), the mushroom "farm" they tend, the recycling sorting depot, the variety of plants they have grown to sell and a whole bunch of entrepreneurial ideas. It is all very well organized, and there are classes going on all over the place in the surrounding buildings.

There is so much more to this organization than I have explained to you. Maybe as I become more involved in the recycling end I will learn more about what goes on with the street kid ministry and how it all started. In turn, I will pass the information on to you. Just knowing that by recycling my garbage I am not just keeping stuff out of the landfill, but that I am helping kids who could have been on the streets makes it that much more satisfying when I clean out my dirty tin cans in the kitchen sink. I've always supported recycling but I'm totally sold now:)

Thanks for reading.