Green camp for Cuba
By Peter Boyle
MELBOURNE — The Green Team, a new non-profit cooperative, is trying to organise a group of Australians to participate in a new internationalist Green Camp in Cuba next year. According to Wayne Wadsworth, the camp's role will be to train people from Cuba and other countries in environmentally safe and efficient ways of producing food, energy and useful products.
"There are more than 20,000 foreign students studying in Cuba, and training some of these people will be a goal of the camp", he told Green Left Weekly.
The camp will operate as a 200-hectare alternative agricultural, energy and industrial farm. The initial members will be selected carefully, since an initial aim is to become self-sufficient in food within three months. Australia will initially contribute two people trained in permaculture, two alternative energy people with electrical experience, one carpenter, one plumber/engineer, one telecommunications expert, one translator and a video film producer.
Local materials will be used where possible, but solar panels, special equipment, tools and bicycles will be sent on the Solidarity Ship to Cuba expected to leave Australia late this year or early next year.
The Green Team is collecting funds, and plans to tour Rolando Alfredo Hernandez Leon, a Cuban scientist and director of energy from the province of Sancti Spiritus, later this month. The Green Team can be contacted at PO Box 100, Carlton South, Victoria 3053. Ph/fax: (03) 376 4728.