Walking to save the world

Rio de Janiero’s population is currently swollen by an additional 100,000 people.  The United Nations Rio+20 meeting is in full swing. "Plus twenty" refers to twenty years after the United Nations Conference on Environment, commonly known as the Earth Summit, was held in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992. Paul Coleman might think of it as Rio+22.  

Paul set off to Rio from his home in Ontario, Canada, in July of 1990, on a Walk to Save the Amazon.  He started alone, with only enough money to cover a month’s expenses.  His sponsors became the communities through which he walked.  His message was simple.  Each individual voice counts; as individuals we can do something to save the Amazon and halt destruction of the world's rain forests.  

Mr. Coleman encouraged a letter-writing campaign to U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar demanding that the U.N. step in to save this natural resource.  As he, and three supporters who joined him in Texas, walked through Mexico City in November 1991, a U.N. representative informed Paul he had been added to the list of speakers at the meeting in Rio. 

Two days later I had a surprise phone call from Paul asking if he could stay with us while passing through Cuernavaca.  I had been reading about his journey in Mexican newspapers and my wife, environmentalist Flora Guerrero, and I were delighted to have the opportunity to meet him.  Paul accepted our offer to facilitate media connections and events for the rest of his walk through Mexico. 

A letter to President Salinas, expressing my concern for Paul's personal safety as he walked the Panamerican Highway, resulted in a phone call from the Federal Highway Police commander in Cuernavaca asking, "Where to you want the patrol car to meet you?"  From Cuernavaca to the Guatemalan border a Policia Federal de Caminos patrol car escorted Paul and those walking with him.  

Towns and cities along Paul’s route welcomed the Walk.  Villagers walked with him to the next town, entrusting him to their neighbors who did the same.  Huajuapan de León had a parade from the village outskirts to the zocalo with police cars and ambulances sirens wailing.  On the zocalo Paul and the municipal president planted a tree.  On a Sunday morning in a little village in Oaxaca the priest celebrated Mass until Flora gave a wave from the door of the church in advance of Paul's arrival.  This guaranteed a good-sized crowd to welcome him.  Radio stations interviewed him, schools held assemblies where he spoke and answered questions, school children cheered him and then helped plant trees.  Environmentalists and other members of civil society met him on the outskirts of Oaxaca City and walked with him to a grand reception in the zocalo.  The governor of Chiapas even flew Paul over the Lacandon rainforest in a light plane.  

Paul Coleman’s reception was so warm in Mexico that I faxed the president of Guatemala.  The Guatemalan counterpart to Policia Federal de Caminos was waiting for Paul at the border!  He was well on his way to Rio. 

The 1992 Earth Summit in Rio was unprecedented in the scope of its concern for finding a new model that could both allow continued economic development and halt the escalating and rapid pollution of the environment and depredation of irreplaceable natural resources. 

Agenda 21 was the most significant plan adopted at the conference.  It focused on sustainable development and is a comprehensive global, national, local blueprint for actions to stop destruction of the environment by human action.  It recognizes that poverty, as well as excessive consumption by affluent populations, exerts unprecedented stress on a fragile environment.  It places responsibility on developed nations to help less-developed countries meet the standards.  

A 1997 assessment of the achievements of the Earth Summit determined economic disparity had grown further and the environment was at even greater risk.  The Kyoto Protocol was adopted later that year but not fully implemented until 2005. The United States never supported either Agenda 21 or the Kyoto Protocols.  Conservatives in the U.S. argued against implementation with many claiming there has been no human-caused climate change.  Without U.S. support the promise of the Earth Summit was not realized.  Pre-event press coverage of expectations for Rio+20 is generally pessimistic.  

Concurrent with the U.N.'s Rio+20 conference the Brazilian government provided five million dollars for a "People’s Rio+20 Summit . . . designed to foster alternative ideas and provide an outlet for discontent at U.N. member countries' failure to preserve biodiversity, eliminate poverty and cut greenhouse gas emissions.” Hundreds of groups - including environmentalists, unions, religious groups and indigenous tribes – are taking part in the nine-day event expected to climax with a rally of 50,000 people on June 20th.   110 heads of state convene in Rio on that day.

Meanwhile, Paul Coleman continues walking and is now known throughout the world as “Earthwalker.”  Though remaining committed to the rainforests and trees, Paul’s mission has evolved to include world peace.  Since 1990 he has walked the world with the goal of planting more than 100 million trees  -- “one for every man, woman and child killed in the wars of the last century.”   He’s walked 47,500 km and planted 11,350,000 trees. Paul Coleman is taking one step at a time to change the world. 

Organization goes the extra mile

Last month I picked up a group of Camden, New Jersey, high school and community college students at the Mexico City airport.   They’d raised $10,000 dollars for a service-learning trip with Cuernavaca’s social services agency VAMOS! -- founded in 1986 to work with the “poorest of the poor”.  Aboard the van, Djvonn Brown, one of two returning students, asked, "are you going to tell us about things as we drive?"

He had finagled a front seat, put away electronic devices and was asking to learn about this foreign country.  I answered with a question addressed to the chaperones "Shall we take a slightly longer route and go through downtown Mexico City?" We approached downtown by way of La Merced Market, skirted what had been the south shore of the island of Tenochtitlan, passing Sor Juana’s Convent of San Jeronimo.  We turned north in front of the ancient aqueduct terminal; it brought water to the old city from the springs at Chapultepec.  I dropped the group in front of the bandstand Diego Rivera incorporated into his mural "A Dream of Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Park," promising to meet them at the Juarez monument on the other side of the park.  I expected them to arrive before me.  Wrong.  I watched them cross the park while keeping an eye out for the pesky electric-powered police trucks, thereby avoiding a 'boot' on my tire.   They unhurriedly danced with similar-aged kids at the bandstand, bought churros from a street vendor, had a group photo taken with President Juarez in the background while drinking in the pulsating city park.
 
We drove through the Centro Historico past sinking and tilting buildings. They heard about the Count of Orizaba and saw his family's talavera tile-covered palace.  Progress was slow as we passed the National Palace, Zocalo, and Cathedral. Each site, and such a responsive group, invites stories of past and present Mexico.  As we left the city, Father Jeff Puttoff, founder of Hopeworks ‘n Camden, guided the conversation with incisive questions of social content.  Father Jeff apparently multi-tasked, sending photos and comments to the group blog.  They were already posted when I checked that evening.

The following day another chaperone, Dr. Kathleen Duffy, recorded in her journal -- later included in an article about the trip: "As I stood in the brilliant Mexican sunshine on the afternoon of January 13, a wave of panic washed over me. "My trepidation was not the result of being one of the adults responsible for six youth from Hopeworks ‘n Camden nearly 3,000 miles from home, nor was it caused by warnings of cartel violence published on the U.S. State Department website. I was fearful that the one liter bottle of Jarritos soda my gracious hostess was pouring was not going to fill all the cups of her 12 guests. With each cup she poured, I analyzed how much was left, and how this simple expression of generosity might cause her family not to have enough money to eat that night. All the members of my group reflected on these events that evening. We were saddened that only one of the five children in the family was able to attend school, as well as the fact that there was no running water or cooking facilities in the house, save for a hot plate in the bedroom."

"This was not the only expression of kindness from a stranger that left me speechless on my six-day journey to Cuernavaca.  The next morning we visited a community center run by the agency VAMOS!, where I had the opportunity to read to children and give each of them a paperback book to take home.  I admired a doll skirt that one of the moms was crocheting for her child.  At the end of the session, tiny 3-year-old Monse tapped me and handed me the skirt.  It was beautiful, and I felt blessed to be given something out of want, not excess."

The VAMOS! board holds its annual meeting this week.  Board-members direct the organization and cover all fund-raising and administrative expenses.  Donors are guaranteed every donated penny goes directly to projects for the poor.  Not many organizations make that guarantee. VAMOS!'s 2011 annual report records ten community centers open for 2,170 service days. 170,000 three-course meals were served -- each included a vitamin.  Mobile medical and dental services regularly visit each project site.  After-school educational programs serve children, ages 3 to 15.  Canadian Friends of Vamos' mobile computer lab provided 12,700 hours of computer training for girls (49%), boys (42%), and adults (9%, mostly women).   Teens participating in the computer program report “better school performance as well as broadened expectations.”

VAMOS! was conceived after Vermonters Bill and Patty Coleman participated in a 1986 Cuernavaca retreat.  Like many visitors, they enjoyed the artisan market but their attention was drawn under the sales tables.  They saw babies sleeping, children playing.  They also saw school-age children working with their parents selling on the streets.  After returning home they resolved to do something.  From this humble beginning grew VAMOS! -- translatable as "lets do this together."

Last Saturday’s memorial Mass for Bill Coleman was attended by widow Patty and more than a 150 people involved with VAMOS!.  VAMOS! is now a charitable organization transforming lives of young people on both sides of the only border in the world shared by the first world and the third world.  For not only does VAMOS! provide help to Mexicans in need but it gives the opportunity for dozens of young service-learning U.S. students to experience Mexico and  learn that, like Bill and Patty Coleman, one person can make a difference.  Enthusiastic, wide-eyed, generous-hearted young people like Djvonn can even transform a routine airport-run into a grand adventure.