Our urban gardening project was active from 2018 to 2019. We had established a low-maintenance garden, with the intention of developing space-efficient models of gardening and soil maintenance for urban communities.

The garden was based at the IVCC in New Kingston, which offered free classes in Spanish language, and Latin American culture (mostly dance and music).

Our garden had become productive, and the IVCC agreed to give us permission to expand it in exchange for our maintenance of the yard.

Due to an expansion of sanctions on Venezuela in 2019, the IVCC had to close down and the administrators lost control of the property.

During the pandemic, some members established a plant nursery in anticipation of a new gardening project.

The Communal Production Project was conceptualised in 2020. The idea was to preserve the value of market produce and the food output of households’ backyards, in hopes of incentivising people to make more use of fresh produce from the market or even to grow more food in their backyards and communities.

We have recently begun the construction of a dehydrator that will use cooking gas as its heat source. This can be used to make dried fruit, powders, flour, and other simple products from fresh produce.

We have conceptualised a waste management project but we have not yet launched it anywhere yet. The pandemic significantly limited our ability to gather in-person, which is crucial for kickstarting and maintaining this project. Since the easing of the pandemic, we have been focused on other things including consolidating our base.

Many communities do not have proper garbage collection services, making the garbage a detriment to their health. Large heaps of garbage attract pests, and people have to burn their garbage or throw them in gullies to avoid this.

The idea of the waste management project is to reduce the size of garbage heaps in communities by redirecting organic waste to be used so that the garbage heaps are smaller, generate less heat, have less smells, and would be less attractive to pests.

We want to build a local assembly of social movements and representative organisations, which are unfortunately less visible in civil society than NGOs.

Such assemblies exist among movements in other countries, allowing grassroots voices to be heard more easily by each other and by others as well.

We have faced some hiccups in our attempts to do this, but the efforts continue.