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UWI TODAY
– SUNDAY 6TH DECEMBER, 2015
COMMUNITY
OnNovember 2, Green Screen
–The Environmental Series
celebrated their fifth anniversary under the theme
together
,
with a Benefit Launch and debut of their film,
A Better Place
– a documentary in five parts
produced by Carver Bacchus,
Managing Director of Sustain T&T and directed by award-
winning filmmaker Miquel Galofré. In his introductory
speech, Bacchus described the film as a “creative artifact
and testimony of sustainability and creativity.”
Indeed, the filmdiverges from traditional documentary
genre expectations by using local artists and musicians to
guide the stories of five community-based organisations as
they affect diverse areas throughout Trinidad. According
to Bacchus, “the music is the foreground and not the
background.” In addition to having their unique soundtrack,
The Lows
of Life
in the
HEIGHTS
of
GUANAPO
each featured organisation was supported by the Global
Environment Facility’s Small Grants Programme (GEF-
SGP) which was implemented by the United Nations
Development Programme (UNDP).
The film opens in the heights of Guanapo showing
members of the community rummaging through a dump
site. It’s an unfamiliar scene to The UWI’s Department of
Chemistry and Veterinary Science whose members have
been involved with the UNDP GEF-SGP Science Education
as a Climate Change Resilience Strategy (SECCRS) project
since 2014.
A Better Place centers on the Aquaponics (a system
combining aquatic animals such as fish in tanks with plants
in water wherein, the fish waste produced acts as a food
Guanapo Aquaponics Project
The aquaponics project in Guanapo has engaged the attention of the Tunapuna/Piarco Regional Corporation. Several
councilors from surrounding areas have visited and agreed to maintain the Guanapo demonstration site. They have
also requested that demonstration systems be set up in other TPRC burgesses. The project team and trained Guanapo
facilitators are ready to assist with propagating the aquaponics project in other areas. The project will also continue
with a series of proposal writing and project leadership workshops to assist the Guanapo Community Environmental
Development Organization and other NGOs to win funding and execute their project ideas.
A Better Place is an eye-opener of how communities live
B Y J E A N E T T E A W A I
source for the growing plants, and the plants in turn, provide
a filter for the water the fish live in) portion of the project
– an offshoot of their work with The UWI-Trinidad and
Tobago Research and Development Impact (TT-RDI) Fund
facilitated project. Led by Dr. Denise Beckles the project
determined the extent of contaminants from landfill in the
air, soil and water. Members of the Heights of Guanapo
community were not only trained to use aquaponics to avoid
soil and water contamination from the landfill, but also a
portion of them were used as mentors to teach inThe UWI
After-School Care Centre’s (ASCC) Children’s Discovery
Workshop that took place in August.
The idea of living in proximity to a landfill while
depending on it for your daily livelihood may seem like
