Page 2580 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 1 August 2018
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called guanabana in Spanish, soursop in English. I could not get enough of this delicious drink. Other guests clearly felt the same way too, as it was the first one to sell out.
I wish to publicly express my thanks to the Australia Colombia Friendship Association and the entire ACT Colombian community for working so hard to share with us what is intimately personal and important to them. I would also like to thank Giovani Cano, president of the association, for kindly inviting me to participate at this fantastic event. Many thanks as well to Mexico Lindo Canberra; to Kokoloco and its director, Becky Fleming; the photographer Maria Koulouris; to Raul, Mary, Rocio, Sandra and Adrian for the wonderful food and drink; to Maria and Claire Ocana, the “wonder twins”; to Yasmin, Vidal, James, Sylvain and Priscilla; and to all the volunteers who helped with both set-up and clean-up. I can say with all sincerity that I love Colombian heritage and culture. Gracias, my Colombian amigos. That means thank you, my Colombian friends.
Trashmob
MS ORR (Yerrabi) (6.05): I rise this evening to highlight the great work being done by one of our local community groups, Trashmob Canberra. Trashmob is a volunteer-run initiative that hosts clean-up events across the ACT, with the goal of keeping litter out of our suburbs. Not only does their work make our suburbs look cleaner but it also makes our environment healthier and safer for families and our local wildlife. We are lucky in the ACT to have such a beautiful natural landscape and clean environment. However, as our city grows, dealing with the waste and litter created by an increasing population is a challenge we continue to face.
Trashmob’s approach of hands-on environmentalism has given the Canberra community a fun and easy way to help us address this challenge. Their growing base of supporters and volunteers have already made a significant difference to our local environment. They have increased the Canberra community’s awareness of the impact of waste and littering and opened up the conversation to help educate people on waste reduction.
Trashmob started as an individual effort by founder Maddie Diamond to clean up her local environment. As an individual, cleaning up the litter of a whole city is an insurmountable task. Instead, Maddie decided to gather a group of people who shared her concern for the environment. Trashmob now has a base of around 100 supporters and they are able to run successful events every couple of weeks. Together they are making a visible difference to our local environment and having fun in the process.
I recently got to see the power of the Trashmob collective when I invited them to co-host a clean-up with me in Moncrieff. Moncrieff is a new suburb in my electorate, but due to the mismanagement of waste from some private construction sites, it is not as clean as one might hope. While I was in the process of pushing for a long-term and permanent solution to the rubbish from the building sites, there was cleaning up to be done. Even with the cold and windy weather, volunteers from both Trashmob and the Moncrieff community turned out to help clean up the suburb.
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