VOYAGE 69, 2010
The project, ALBA YOUTH CRUISE for Latin America is a joint project between the Ministry of Foreign Relations in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and the NGO Peace Boat. With similar characterists to the ALBA, the program is focused on creating mechanisms that take advantage of the positive cooperation between different nations in order to create equality in Latin America. This project will invite a group of Latin American youth to join the ship and focus on these imporatant issues while they are onboard the Peace Boat from Venezuela until Guatemala.
The realization of this program is to strengthen the network among young leaders in Latin America that focuses on the Political and Social integration of Latin America., as well as the importance of equality and social justice.
The creation of a strong link that promotes international solidarity among Latin American youth with youth from Asia, in particular from Korea and Japan, with a look at how to create a just and sustainable world.
DECLARATION (English)
ALBA Youth Declaration
We, youth from Bolivia, Dominica, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Venezuela, member countries of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas-TCP, and Haiti, as a country invited to join this platform of union, true alternative integration, promoting solidarity, cooperation, mutual support, respect, justice, and equality; concepts mentioned in the 200 year Declaration in Caracas, Venezuela on April 19th, 2010. After participating onboard with the non governmental organization, Peace Boat on the first ALBA Youth Cruise, where through an educational voyage in Latin America and the Caribbean, promoting peace and solidarity among nations, cultural exchange, international cooperation, the preservation of human rights and participative democracy, sustainable development and respect for the environment, we declare:
The fight against military intervention, the preservation and re-establishment of world peace are essential elements of the action being taken by the ALBA countries in their relationship to the international community; for this reason, we, the youth of the ALBA countries, support a campaign through various actions that re-establishes and conserves the peace of all nations, formed by a youth movement from Latin America and the Caribbean to support and maintain the Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution, which renounces war as a method to solving disputes and prohibits the use of armed forces and other war potential.
We believe that it is time for the people of the world to understand the necessity to develop spaces, agreements and alliances that strengthen the capacity to guarantee the sovereignty of nations against foreign intervention, in particular against the occupation and threat from the United States of America.
To achieve this, we commit ourselves to promote the creation and maintenance of peaceful law in our countries, cities and communities where we work and study.
VOYAGE 68, 2010
ENVIRONMENTAL IS PROGRAM
The journey started...
On February 12, seven young members of environmental organizations came from Uruguay, Argentina and Chile to join the Peace Boat team. Each of them brought a proposal and a clear objective to give testimony of their commitment to the environment from their diverse places, actions, and jobs or professions.
During their first day of participating in Peace Boat, they undertook several activities. Without any doubt the most remarkable to tell is their encounter with the cooperative of cartoneros (those that recycle cardboard) 'Eloisa Cartonera'. Between the streets Antonio Zolezzi and Aristobulo del Valle, one block away from the players' entrance to the stadium 'La Bombonera' in Buenos Aires, you will find a particular printing shop whose name comes from a platonic love story, but no drama at all. Hundreds of issues are printed, whose covers come from authors that write their texts to give life to a novel, a story, a piece of work of Latin American and foreign writers that have come to stay among us.
The workshop is formed by nine artists. It is a colorful space, where the walls invite us to open our imagination, taking us to find a yellow submarine, some red flowers painted on Styrofoam, Che smiling as if he understands the joy of this art, and mobiles of different motifs that dance on our heads.
At the front of the establishment, dispersed letters come together enticing us to read “much more than books”. And why not, if Maria, Alejandro, Ricardo and Miriam, who received us kindly and explained their work to us, invite us to let our inner child to be part of us again, leading us to create a figure that would be painted later to serve as a new element for the mobile dancer. Then each of them create their travel log, which should be a used as a recording device of what motivates the travelers the most to imprint.
'Eloisa Cartonera' is two counters, a printing press, a paper cutter and a pile of cardboard, paints, brushes, glue, some chairs, the traditional mate, and on the ceiling in front of a cram window a five-bladed fan that gives the impression of abating the strong heat of the neighborhood of La Boca.
BLOG 2.
13 February 2010
Montevideo is the second port of call for the IS group after just leaving Buenos Aires, after a busy day of activities in which we highlighted the Cartoneros of Eloisa, listened to the testimony of two Hibakusha (survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki), and took the opportunity to get to know each other and share our experiences. In between these activities, we had an exchange with the organization PROTEGER of Montevideo to discuss local fishing and the problems involved in trawling, which affect a great number of local fishermen.
BLOG 3
14 February 2010
After departing from the port of Montevideo, Uruguay and on our first day at sea, the Latin IS had a busy day with various activities aboard Peace Boat. We started the day with an informative talk on emergency evacuation and safety standards to be complied with on the ship.
In the afternoon, we participated in a public presentation of the group to all the passengers, in which we briefly explained our activities and the objectives of the program on board. After that, we had a cultural exchange, where we learned to make origami figures (the Japanese art of making figures with folded paper). Thanks to this wonderful experience, we realized that the language barrier is not an obstacle to communicating with others and we managed to learn a lot about the Japanese culture.
At night, the day of Saint Valentin (Valentine's Day) was celebrated on board with a formal dinner and we had an exchange with the CCs and GETs (volunteer interpreters and language teachers onboard) to practice and learn Spanish-English, and know more about this group of international youth. And to close the day, we attended the musical concert by Yagi Nobuo (a Japanese singer), where we enjoyed a musical repertoire in Japanese and Spanish. Our first day onboard; a very interesting and promising experience of what is about to come, a very interesting start of interactions among Latin Americans, international youth and Japanese participants.
Program Participants
[ CHILE ]
CODEFF (for its acronym in Spanish), National Committee for the Defense of the Flora and Fauna, is Chile's oldest environmental non-governmental organization and a member of Friends of the Earth International. By 2008, it has a 40 year track record of action towards the conservation of nature and the promotion of sustainable development.
Daniela Alvarez, from Coyhaique – Volunteer Member of CODEFF and currently working in Region V on legal issues and the campaign for Patagonia.
Pedro Cayuqueo Millaqueo, from Temuco – Founder and director since 2003 of the Newspaper Azkintuwe ("El Mirador" / www.azkintuwe.org), that is circulated in the southern states of Chile and Argentina. Member of the Mapuche Community “Luis Millaqueo”, of the area Ragnintuleufu (Entre Ríos).
[ ARGENTINA ]
PROTEGER, founded in Santa Fe, Argentina on October 16, 1991, the Foundation PROTEGER brings together environmentalists with more that 20 years of experience and promotes a network of local fishermen known as Redepesca, that consists of some 3,000 families of fishermen from the north of Argentina. In this network, a group of “fisheries monitors” was formed - youth that track fisheries and generate information that is later studied at a scientific level. These youth monitors are children of fishermen and have a genuine interest in the environment.
Betania Cappato, from Santa Fe. Videographer – works at Proteger (in the area of communication)
Nelson Peteán, works at Proteger on the program of value-added fishery resources. He is a food engineer and develops the technical part of this program.
[ URUGUAY ]
REDES (for its acronym in English), (Network of Social Ecology) – Friends of the Earth is an organization that works from the perspective of social-ecology, with the understanding that the actual ecologic crisis responds to a large extent to the processes of concentration of resources and decision making being in the hands of a few corporate actors, that act on the logic of grow or die, seeking to generate the most possible profit in a short-term without giving consideration to the environmental or social impacts of economic activities.
Lucìa Surroca from Montevideo – has worked in Redes for the past two years and is a history student. She has also experienced Peace Boat as a young environmentalist during the 47th global voyage.
Marcela Schenck from Montevideo – works in the area of communication. She is one of the translators of the radio mundo real (www.radiomundoreal.fm ) and has a background in the social field.
PROGRAM COORDINATORS
Emilie McGlone (Peace Boat , Patagonica Collective)
www.peaceboat.org & www.parties4peace.com
United States, International Coordinator Peace Boat and environmental activist
Emilie McGlone was born in the city of Irvine, California in the U.S. where she completed her elementary and secondary education. Then, she moved to North Carolina where she attended the University of North Carolina and had the opportunity to participate in an exchange program in 2001 that focused on the culture, economy and politics of Chile. After graduating, she explored new horizons by moving to Asia to work in Japan, where she founded the production company Parties for Peace, a nonprofit production group that promotes peace and a better environment through music and dance.
In 2003, she was the coordinator of the environmental NGO “Bicycle for Everyone's Earth” and organized a bicycle trip from northern to southern Japan, making several presentations about the environment. This experience gave her the opportunity to work as a volunteer for Peace Boat, a nongovernmental, nonprofit organization based in Japan working to promote peace, human rights, sustainable development and respect for the environment. Thanks to her experience at Peace Boat, she was able to travel to Chile again to work with CODEFF, the oldest environmental NGO in the country. In 2005, Emilie began working as an International Coordinator for Peace Boat, organizing educational programs and collaborating with other international organizations to promote a culture of peace and sustainability. In 2009, she founded Patagonica, a collective, recreational and cultural project, which through music seeks to create environmental awareness of the ecological abuse accentuated in the austral zone, product of global warming and indiscriminate exploitation of natural resources in Patagonia.
Manuel Martinez (Euphoria y ENERGIZA) http://euphorianews.wordpress.com/
Chile, journalist and environmental activist www.energizachile.cl
Manuel Martínez Opazo was born in the city of Constitucion, where he completed his elementary and secondary education. Then he moved to Santiago, where he pursued his higher education and received a degree in Communications. His unique ways of seeing life have enabled him to travel just the necessary but not enough, as he usually says, and through these trips he has established links with Amazonian communities becoming an advocate for the environment and creating a movement against the coal power plants that today are of importance in various national spheres. Through the same means and with the support of a private company, he also gave birth to the exhibition energiza, a display of renewable energy in Antofagasta.
Martinez combines music, culture and ecology in one venue, has written opinion columns on these subjects in the newspaper La Nacion for more than six years, and recently in November published his first book. His hobbies include writing poetry and combining it with photographs. These days with to a professional team, he is creating an NGO whose purpose will be directed to the environment and culture, two things that should be strengthened to stop the misconception of meddling with our ecosystem.
Maria Antonia Peréz (ToDesignTo y Peace Boat)
info: http://www.todesignto.com
Born in Medellin, Colombia, the designer and activist María Antonia Pérez has traveled much of her life and has lived in various countries helping to create a more just and sustainable world for all. She is an illustrator and and a specialist in Editorial Design. Her work as freelance designer for various clients in Colombia, Sri Lanka, Spain, Japan and Cambodia has helped her to understand and deal with the cultural differences, and have given her the opportunity to create promotional and educational material for different campaigns and projects worldwide, where she has also worked as a teacher.
Maria was a Peace Boat volunteer during the 51st and 54th Global Voyages and currently works with the organization to strengthen the relations in Latin America, especially in Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela. Besides her work with Peace Boat, she also works as designer for Parties 4 Peace, helping to disseminate the necessary information to promote the campaign to protect the nature in Patagonia, Chile, and collaborates with Pepy in Cambodia in the development of educational material among other things. In Colombia, she actively interacts with various foundations and participates in social art and environmental education projects.
