Let's do it world!

Let's Do It! team in Asia Pacific Urban Forum in Bangkok (Jul 06)

From 21^st until 24^th of June Tiina and Birjo were representing and introducing Let's do it! movement and World Cleanup 2012 in Bangkok - during Asia and Pacific Urban forum. There were more than 600 participants from the region, from many NGO-s, local governments and other organizations. 

In their words it was truly eye-opening experience regarding the key issues in the region and present situation in waste management sphere. 

It seems that in these regions several issues which we are globally facing today - overpopulation, the gaps in incomes and living environments, urbanisation etc are expecially drastic and need new solutions and approaches. One of those areas that needs vast improvement is waste- or shall we say - resource management. The differences in different areas and cities are huge - it seems there are new models and systems being tried out and tested simultaneously in many different places. The local governments seem to be keen in trying out new ways on how to solve those problems involving the local people very much in the process. So Let's Do It! action model, empowering local people and communities to take active role in solving big issues, got very strong and positive response from many of the participants.

Tiina and Birjo had long talks with different forum participants and got many promising contacts - one of them is a network of municipalities - UCLG-ASPAC, which connects more than 7000 bigger and smaller members in Asia Pacific, uniting more than 3 billion people. But also many interested representatives from cities and municipalities all over Asia – from Philippines, Nepal, Malaysia, Pakistan, Vietnam, South-Korea, Thailand, Austria. There was also a good contact with Citynet representatives and International Solid Waste Management people who seemed interested in further cooperation with us.

You can request a more detailed report on the event by writing to liine@letsdoitworld.org

Cityscapes blog was covering the Forum and also made a post on World Cleanup 2012.