Hip-Hop, Recycling, and Youth Activism: Another contest winner in the Huff Post

Trash is CashWhen we launched the ViewChange Online Film Contest we encouraged entries of all genres – and we got them! One of the most creative – and certainly the catchiest – entry was Peter Jansen’s “Trash is Cash,” which won the contest’s “Sustainability” award.

 

Peter Jansen has worked as art director and production designer in film and TV for 25 years. He now lives and works in Kenya, finding creative ways to combat poverty in the slums of Nairobi. There, Jansen discovered a group of motivated youth who use hip-hop music to call attention to an important issue in the city—recycling. Jansen writes in the Huffington Post about the youth group Walfame (the Kings) and the goal they are trying to achieve through hip-hop:

 

   

“They communicate through music: the message in this way is very powerful because music has long been a favorite pastime of teens and has influenced the minds of youths all over the world, and they use their music to raise awareness, inspire action, and accelerate the worldwide movement to reduce extreme poverty. Music meets life, seeing beauty, giving hope and alternatives. All eight of them are living in an African slum. Living on less than one dollar a day. Not turning to a life of idleness, drug abuse and crime but acting positively and being a positive example for all the youths who live in poverty.

"They live in shacks made by pieces of corrugated metal, without any hygienic services. They live in dusty roads full of potholes and mud puddles and crossed by a big number of bad smelling streams mixed with organic scraps and urine, where children play and meat and vegetables are sold.


"Trash bins have not arrived in Mathare, Dandora and Korogocho. These two slums are totally lacking trash collection, despite the fact that houses, shops and hotels from all of Nairobi dump roughly 1.5 tons of trash there every day. Only the youths have been able to organize themselves and to clean up the streets once a week: In this way they have created jobs and a way to keep the environment clean. With their activism the youth are progressive. They show us how recycling can be the best solution.”

   

 

Jansen created the music video “Trash is Cash” to highlight the positive, transformative powers of the music and activism. Watch the talents of these hip-hop stars below:

 



Read Peter Jansen’s complete article in the Huffington Post.

 
 

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