The story of Paola Galassi, SCT operator involved in the #100%plastica project.
The Hawassa 100% Plastic Free event was a great gamble, the possible results of which I couldn’t imagine. Will too many people come? Will too few come? Will there be enough t-shirts? Will Coca-Cola give us tables and chairs? Or just drinks? Or won’t they give us drinks, but will they bring us umbrellas?
– “No, unfortunately we can’t do anything with 5 chairs and 10 umbrellas, we want tables. Ah… you offer us drinks but only if we take plastic instead of glass? No, look, our event is called 100% Plastic Free….”
– “Do we have gasoline?”
– “Yes, okay, let’s do the basketball game at the beginning, since they train at the youth center, but we can avoid the Taekwondo demonstration…”
– “So, the minibus arrives, takes the speakers to the youth center, then picks up the journalists, then comes back here, the guys plaster it with posters, Ashenafi climbs up and mounts the small generator on the roof, meanwhile Abuka brings back all the chargers from his house (he charged them because in his neighborhood he has light).”
Indeed yes. Two days before the event an electricity substation explodes and leaves without power the office district, the youth center district chosen for the event and my home district. It’s a race for electricity and gasoline to feed the two generators needed to run the entire planned program.
I don’t panic and try to manage my collaborators and the group according to the style that distinguishes me: graphic maps to organize spaces and responsibilities, meetings in a circle on the tarpaulin spread out in the garden, briefings with my Community Mobilizers to pass on to them again, step by step, the coordination of the working group.
In my journey as a group leader and cooperator, the methodology is not just a practice that I apply, but a mental and relational attitude that is the subject of continuous research and experimentation and that pushes me to find creative and participatory ways to manage even logistical issues.
The entire CIFA Hawassa staff, in the week before the event, puts themselves at our service. This is a good thing, because, like everywhere in the world, an event doesn’t work without an audience and the audience must be called, informed, sometimes chased, sometimes courted. We divide the responsibilities on the guests: the project coordinator takes care of institutions and authorities, the economic experts manage the associations of collectors, fishermen and sailors, we take care of schools, youth centers and our group of young artists who, meanwhile, has given itself a name and a precise identity: PAT – PLASTIC AWARENESS TEAM.
On December 22nd, on a beautiful sunny day, we finish the last preparations and reach Fiker Hayk, the entrance to the lake and the main meeting place of Hawassa, but we find it full of football fans and we are forced to move to the roundabout a little further on.
The groups of high school and university students are already present, thanks to the fact that we promised the t-shirts only to those who would arrive on time. We begin to confront the student representatives of the various schools we have appointed, giving them the t-shirts and learning the first great lesson of this event: if you distribute free goods in a situation like this, you must have the means and the organization necessary to manage it.
Due to the distribution of t-shirts at the beginning of the parade and water during the walk, we had moments of tension that I had not foreseen: I saw people become violent and I had to request the intervention of the policemen who accompanied us. But once we overcame this obstacle, we moved through the main streets of the city like a joyful and proud blue river: the collectors, in their overalls and driving the new ape cars donated by CIFA and inaugurated at the beginning of the parade, appeared united and proud of their new category, while the students held the banners with us and let themselves be carried away by the group of actors, who intoned choirs, rhythmic by plastic bottles, and staged dances and flash mobs.
Arrivati allo Youth Center in più di 300, le attività del pomeriggio si sono susseguite nelle diverse aree del centro con grande interesse e partecipazione dei più giovani: mentre in una sala interna si replicavano workshop scientifici sulla plastica condotti dagli studenti universitari coinvolti nel progetto, nello spazio principale avveniva la premiazione della partita di basket con le medaglie di Hawassa 100% Plastic Free e lo spettacolo teatrale dei nostri attori, con l’intervento speciale dei collector in scena
Arriving at the Youth Center with more than 300 people, the afternoon activities followed one another in the different areas of the center with great interest and participation of the younger ones: while in an internal room scientific workshops on plastic were replicated conducted by the university students involved in the project, in the main space the award ceremony of the basketball game took place with the Hawassa 100% Plastic Free medals and the theatrical performance of our actors, with the special intervention of the collectors on stage.
The event ended with the musical contest “Sound of the Earth”, during which 5 local musicians and musical groups performed in front of the public and a chosen jury, bringing an original piece on the theme.
It was my first experience managing a complex event and it certainly wasn’t easy; in my schedule I had included a performative moment, my “gift” to Hawassa – to the public, my actors, my colleagues and the friends present. At the expected moment, my energies were low and the mood very different from how someone would like to feel before going on stage. But a colleague invited me not to give up and so, after putting on a sweatshirt 5 sizes bigger than me, I sang my ecological RAP.
After my 3 minutes, I put away the sweatshirt and returned to the role of organizer.
I remembered when I was studying theater and my teacher told me that a good actor is able to enter and exit the acting “state” with ease, fluidly.
The event ended in the dark, because the lights didn’t hold or the generator didn’t hold the lights, but the beauty is that I turned on the cell phone flashlight and then other people turned it on and we went on like this, rewarding the winners of the contest, putting on music, dancing, consoling a crying child, arguing and making peace while the microphone cables got tangled with each other.
Our event has had great echo: it has been reported by local and national radio and television. In the streets around the office and the Youth Center I officially become “the farenji (white woman) of plastic”. Also the CIFA Onlus staff and our artists are increasingly a reference for the fight against plastic and pollution in the Hawassa community.
