This week the ex­ec­u­tive of the Glob­al En­vi­ron­ment Fa­cil­i­ty (GEF) and Small Grants Pro­gramme (SGP) presents the first part of an ex­clu­sive se­ries for Clean­ing Up The Mess on the hope­ful theme of how they help civ­il-so­ci­ety groups, or­di­nary peo­ple who care about our en­vi­ron­men­tal is­sues, to make a dif­fer­ence.

St James, Trinidad and To­ba­go's cul­tur­al Mec­ca, once dubbed the city that nev­er sleeps, is home to a longer stretch of bars and pubs per me­tre than any oth­er ur­ban area in the coun­try. It's al­so home to a ded­i­cat­ed group of peo­ple who are con­cerned about their com­mu­ni­ty and are do­ing some­thing to make a dif­fer­ence.

En­ter Glen­da Gon­za­les, the 36-year-old, ded­i­cat­ed moth­er of six who has called St James her home for 12 years, af­ter mov­ing there from Las Cuevas. Her day starts at 5.30 am. By 7.30 her chil­dren are fed, lunch­es packed and every­one is off to school. She pro­fess­es her life re­volves around her chil­dren and the com­mu­ni­ty group she has been a mem­ber of for the past six years- the St James Em­pow­er­ment Foun­da­tion.

Speak­ing with pas­sion and sheer con­vic­tion, Gon­za­les stabs the desk re­peat­ed­ly with her in­dex fin­ger as she de­scribes why com­mu­ni­ty work mat­ters to her. "We live in a par­adise here. We still have clean springs and green trees, all is not lost. So in or­der to do my part to make this coun­try bet­ter for me and my chil­dren's chil­dren, I work with the foun­da­tion to em­pow­er res­i­dents and raise their con­scious­ness about how the choic­es they make im­pact the en­vi­ron­ment."

Case in point has been her in­volve­ment in the foun­da­tion's lat­est project. Frus­trat­ed by ac­cu­mu­lat­ed and im­prop­er­ly-dis­posed-of-waste wash­ing in­to wa­ter­ways and caus­ing nu­mer­ous pub­lic-health is­sues, the St James Em­pow­er­ment Foun­da­tion has tak­en on the city's sol­id-waste man­age­ment sys­tem.

More than just a clean-up cam­paign, their idea in­volves en­gag­ing, ed­u­cat­ing and se­cur­ing the buy-in of the com­mu­ni­ty and part­ner­ing with re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions, the Board of En­gi­neer­ing and the As­so­ci­a­tion of Pro­fes­sion­al En­gi­neers. Com­mu­ni­ty groups like the St James Em­pow­er­ment Foun­da­tion, led by every­day cit­i­zens con­cerned enough about their com­mu­ni­ty's frag­ile ecosys­tem to do some­thing about it, can be found through­out Trinidad and To­ba­go.

They rep­re­sent a grow­ing move­ment of con­ser­va­tion and sus­tain­abil­i­ty ad­vo­cates find­ing so­lu­tions to is­sues af­fect­ing the en­vi­ron­men­tal, so­cial, and eco­nom­ic space in which they live. This labour of love is not with­out its chal­lenges. While many com­mu­ni­ty-based or­gan­i­sa­tions (CBOs) and non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions (NGOs) have ideas they be­lieve can ad­dress en­vi­ron­men­tal chal­lenges con­fronting their com­mu­ni­ty, re­source lim­i­ta­tions and the in­abil­i­ty to trans­form these ideas in­to vi­able projects make it dif­fi­cult for some groups to get their ideas off the ground.

For­tu­nate­ly civ­il-so­ci­ety or­gan­i­sa­tions are get­ting the help they need to ad­dress these is­sues from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Glob­al En­vi­ron­men­tal Fa­cil­i­ty (GEF) Small Grants Pro­gramme (SGP) im­ple­ment­ed by the Unit­ed Na­tions De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme (UNDP). This ar­ti­cle ap­pears cour­tesy the Glob­al En­vi­ron­ment Fa­cil­i­ty (GEF) Small Grant Pro­gramme (SGP) pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion se­ries.

The GEF/SGP pro­vides grants of up to US$50,000 to civ­il-so­ci­ety groups for projects in bio­di­ver­si­ty, cli­mate change, in­ter­na­tion­al wa­ters, per­sis­tent or­gan­ic pol­lu­tants and land degra­da­tion. For fur­ther in­for­ma­tion on ap­ply­ing for GEF/SGP grants please vis­it: www.undp.org.tt/GEF- SGP/or www.face­book.com/GEF­S­G­PTT. If your com­pa­ny or pro­fes­sion­al as­so­ci­a­tion is in­ter­est­ed in part­ner­ing with the UNDP to men­tor or coach grantees of the GEF/SGP, please call 623-7056 Ext. 252