Contribution by David Efraín, Villarrica, Paraguay
My name is David Efraín and I have been a member of the Kolping Youth “San Blás” in the city of Villarrica for five and a half years.
The idea to clean the community stream came to us after a heavy rainfall in our town. It rained so much that the stream filled up and even overflowed its banks. Sadly, this happened as a result of the immense amount of rubbish clogging the waterway. In our Sunday meetings, we reflected on this situation that caused a lot of damage in the community. Together we decided to organise ourselves and invite other people outside the Association to clean up the stream and put up rubbish bins at certain places in the community so that people would stop throwing their rubbish on the ground.
Quite a number of people have joined this initiative. We set a date for our volunteer work, and a number of people made their tractors and trucks available. We cleared 70 tonnes of rubbish.
To this day, we still cooperate in cleaning up the community. Awareness raising should be an ongoing task as people in general should show more interest in the cleanliness of the community.
