Latest news with #Maré
The Citizen
a day ago
- General
- The Citizen
Caring for a cleaner Mbombela
The We Care 4 Nelspruit team continues to ensure everyone is proud of the city. Its founder, Pr TJ Maré, had surgery on the hand he injured quite severely while performing his duties. Despite this, he remains determined to continue his work with his team on the ground. 'I sustained a serious injury when I fell while I was working in February. I had two operations, but am fine now and the team is doing their best to keep the city clean while I am ensuring there are no further complications after surgery,' he said. Maré said We Care 4 Nelspruit is a team effort involving the entire community. ALSO READ: We Care 4 Nelspruit tackles abortion posters Relying on donations, they assist the City of Mbombela (CoM) where they can, to help keep Mbombela clean. The organisation, a registered NPO, regularly cleans the parks and streets, public spaces and entrances across the city. Their efforts are part of an ongoing campaign to ensure the city attracts investors and tourists. Maré and his team operate without any financial assistance from local government. Various sponsors and community donations ensure there is money for fuel and plastic bags. Businesses provide the necessary tools to keep Mbombela clean and Maré's teams provide their time and services for free. ALSO READ: We Care 4 Nelspruit come to City of Mbomela's aid again Major roads such as Dr Enos Mabuza Drive, KaMagugu Road and the R38 are regularly cleaned, the grass is cut and chemical treatment is used to control unwanted plants. All this is done in an effort to make Mbombela a clean and safe city to live in, not only for visitors, but its residents as well. He also thanked the CoM for its Service Delivery Drive, which he says is yielding positive results, as many public parks and sidewalks are being cleaned. At Caxton, we employ humans to generate daily fresh news, not AI intervention. Happy reading! Stay in the know. Download the Caxton Local News Network App Stay in the know. Download the Caxton Local News Network App here
The Guardian
14-05-2025
- General
- The Guardian
How memories of clean water, frogs and fresh air could help save Rio's favelas from future climate disaster
Leticia Pinheiro grew up hearing stories about the Acari River. Her grandmother bathed in its clean waters; her father caught frogs on its margins; and many in the community made a living from fishing there. Now, Pinheiro, 28, and her peers do not even call it a river; it's become known as a valão – an open canal for sewage and rubbish. It borders the Acari favela, which spread over swampy terrain in northern Rio de Janeiro from the 1920s. Floods after heavy tropical rains are historically a problem for this community. But as extreme weather makes them worse and more frequent, the river is increasingly seen as the culprit. In January last year, there was an unprecedented flood, when its waters invaded the homes of 20,000 people. 'When it floods, the whole Acari complex is affected. Rain brings huge anxiety, and people see the river as something extremely negative,' says Pinheiro, a member of the Fala Akari Collective, a community group. The repeated tragedies have led residents to build their homes higher so they can live on upper floors and use brick or concrete to build bed bases and wardrobes to avoid losing furniture to the next floods. The experiences of the Pinheiro family, past and present, are part of the myriad memories revived by an exhibition in a community museum in the Maré favela. Favela Climate Memory brings together testimonials and historical data looking at how residents from 10 favelas in Rio relate to climate and nature, based on stories told by more than 400 people of all ages in conversation circles held over recent years, and discussing how they view and are responding to the climate crisis. Organisers see documenting these memories as an instrument for climate justice in Rio's favelas. Here and around the world, informal settlements such as Akari are disproportionately affected by global heating and extreme weather events due to compounding challenges such as poverty, overcrowded and poor-quality housing, disproportionate exposure to environmental hazards and pollution, gang and police violence, and restricted access to basic services. Theresa Williamson, a Rio-based town planner and environmentalist, says: 'Memory is essential to solving the climate crisis because belonging gives people a sense of identity and connection to their territory. 'When you know the environment where you live – the soil, the trees, the shared history – you care about that place. You have a sense of commitment.' Williamson, who is half-Brazilian, has spoken up for favelas in Rio for more than 25 years. In 2000, she founded Catalytic Communities to promote the development of favelas. In 2018 the organisation launched the Sustainable Favela Network, which is behind the exhibition and includes members from more than 300 favelas fighting for climate justice. 'Favelas are not temporary slums,' she says. 'They are consolidated communities that have been around for generations and where much of the culture associated with Rio was born, like the carnival, the city's informality, the passinho dance. 'These communities are here to stay. When will we give them the infrastructure guarantees and the basic rights they are entitled to and address the historic inequalities that become so visible in this exhibition?' The exhibition's timeline portrays how the climate and environment are interwoven with these communities' histories, showing how people have transformed their surroundings, how their precariousness made them prone to climate disasters, and how the authorities repeatedly used these events as an argument to push the favelas' residents to the city's margins. Banners, pictures and news headlines in the show will remind visitors of historic tragedies in Rio, like the 'flood of the century' in 1966 and another the following year, which killed hundreds of people and left 50,000 people without shelter. They also portray how the city's development has relied on the working poor without providing proper living conditions for them. Acari and Maré grew in the 1940s, when workers arrived from across Brazil to build Avenida Brasil, the city's most important highway, and settled around the construction sites. Informal settlements started to grow on Rio's hilltops after slavery was abolished in 1888, and formerly enslaved people had nowhere to go. In the decades thereafter, waves of immigrants across Brazil arrived in the then-capital looking for work and opportunity, leading to these working-class communities multiplying. Today, favelas are home to almost one in five residents in Rio. Nationwide, they account for 8% of Brazil's population – about 17 million people. Most of the favelas are in cities, with 84% having a water supply and three-quarters having some form of sanitation, according to the 2022 census, compiled by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IGBE). These communities were referred to as 'subnormal agglomerations' by the IGBE until only last year. Despite the official view of favelas, the exhibition has showcased the strength and potency of these areas, with residents and community leaders travelling from across Rio to gather for the openingat the Maré Museum. Representatives of each community gave moving accounts of hardships and resilience, revealing a shared history that many from communities spread far apart had not yet grasped. Marli Damascena, 64, recalled the fishing community that used to thrive in Maré, where she was born and bred. When she was a little girl in the 1960s, she had a view of the immense Guanabara Bay from the window of her home – built by her father, a migrant from the north-eastern state of Ceará. Sign up to Global Dispatch Get a different world view with a roundup of the best news, features and pictures, curated by our global development team after newsletter promotion One day, the sea disappeared when landfill was used in the bay to push back the waters. This allowed social housing to be built in order to relocate residents of the precarious shacks on stilts built over the muddy mangrove margins of the bay. 'I saw that sea being filled in as a child, but it seemed normal. Looking back allows us to realise the drastic changes we went through and how strongly we were affected,' says Damascena, who co-founded the Maré Museum. Maré means tide, and the venue includes a real-size replica of one of its palafitas, the houses on stilts that for years shouted poverty and inequality to those driving past on the way from Rio's international airport. Leonardo Souza's mother lived in one of those houses. But she was not lucky enough to be relocated within Maré itself. Along with about 400 families, she was moved nearly 40 miles (60km) across Rio to Antares, where Souza grew up, in the western Santa Cruz neighbourhood. In the project's memory circles, Souza was touched to hear other residents recounting that period, which was traumatic for his parents, who were migrants from north-eastern Brazil. His father went from a five-minute journey to work to a two-hour commute each way every day. 'These policies were motivated by social cleansing – authorities wanted to show visitors a beautiful city and to hide poverty,' Souza says. Antares first began to be occupied in 1975, although many of the promised brick and concrete houses were still unfinished. As residents from other favelas were relocated there and families multiplied, the community grew in a disorderly manner. Wooded areas became deforested as it expanded, riverbanks were built on and became more prone to flooding. As the growing favelas cleared Santa Cruz's wooded areas, the neighbourhood became one of Rio's warmest districts. 'Santa Cruz is known to have Rio's highest temperatures, but the memory circles reminded us of days when it was fresher,' says Souza, who recently planted 1,000 trees in the community with government funding in an effort to ease the stifling heat. Today, he is a history undergraduate striving to reconstruct the community's past. The exhibition involved partnerships with residents like him, as well as community museums, to revive 'climate memories'. Environmental devastation and risks are part of the history of informal settlements. Deforestation has historically accompanied the growth of favelas, as has the pollution of watercourses due to a lack of sanitation, proper waste disposal and tragedies caused by floods and landslides. Organisers note that these issues have long demanded public investment in response. 'It's counterproductive to criminalise a huge portion of humanity because they are addressing their basic need for shelter by living informally,' says Williamson. 'There is no reason these communities couldn't be upgraded and integrated into the city – not investing in them is policy,' she says. 'Neglect is policy.' According to the UN, nearly a quarter of people in cities around the world are living in informal settlements, and this urban population is expected to reach 3 billion people by 2050. Williamson hopes that the historical data in the exhibition may fill a critical gap in a context where climate policies tend to focus on biomes such as the Amazon rainforest or the Pantanal wetlands – but can rarely rely on data from poor urban settlements. Memory is also a form of resistance. 'It's a way to denounce the systematic erasure of our history as part of our commitment with what comes next,' says Pinheiro. This is especially important now, with her community facing another form of erasure because of the climate crisis. 'Successive floods are leading our families to lose their photographs, documents and belongings,' she says. 'Climate change imposes many losses, not just the material ones.'
Times
24-04-2025
- Times
Pine Cliffs hotel review: a stylish Algarve resort that has it all
Pine Cliffs is well-known among families as one of Portugal's biggest names in child-friendly holidays and the resort certainly packs in the facilities. You'll find the beach at the base of the cliffs here, Praia de Falesia, frequently named as the Algarve's best, while the kids' club is one of the largest you'll come across and there are seven outdoor pools, plus one indoor swim spot. Around the grounds — watch out for cars — you'll find an Annabel Croft tennis academy, a nine-hole golf course and enough restaurants to eat somewhere different every night for a week. Rooms and suites, meanwhile, are spacious enough to accommodate even the largest of broods. This article contains affiliate links, which may earn us revenue Score 8/10The large, white-washed building at the centre of the resort houses two distinct properties, both under Marriott's Luxury Collection brand. Rooms in the main hotel are the most traditional, featuring terracotta-tiled floors and headboards created from hand-painted azulejos (ornate Portuguese tiles) and best suited to couples, while the newer Ocean Suites, set in an adjoining building with its own reception, have been designed to appeal to families. These are wonderfully spacious, with separate bedrooms, a fully equipped kitchen (with washing machine) and open-plan living and dining spaces. Private balconies overlook the grounds and you'll get both a family bathroom and an en suite off the main bedroom, complete with a tempting egg-shaped bath tub. Score 8/10With 15 restaurants and bars scattered around the resort, there's a dizzying choice when it comes to dinner, including Italian classics at Portofino by MIMO, seafood at O Pescador and steaks at Piri Piri Steakhouse. For lunch, though, it has to be Maré, its terrace just above the beach tempting you in for charcoal-grilled seafood with a stonking ocean view. Children are well catered for throughout, with kids' menus reflecting what the grown-ups are eating (catch of the day at Maré, mini pizzas at Portofino), while breakfast is buffet-style, served at the low-key indoor-outdoor Jardim Colonial. This is a busy space but the buffet will please even the fussiest eaters, with everything from pancakes to pasteis de nata on offer. There's also plenty of fresh fruit, a tasty shakshuka and eggs cooked to order. Service throughout the hotel is slick, laid-back and welcoming. • Best family hotels in Portugal• Discover our full guide to Portugal Score 9/10Pine Cliffs focuses on families and most little ones make a beeline for the gigantic Porto Pirata kids' club, based around two large pirate ships. Activities are tailored to those aged 12 months to eight years, though you can call in anytime for mini golf, a dip in the toddler pool or to play in the playground or on the trampolines. While the children are safely occupied, parents can enjoy the Serenity spa, where treatments have a nod to the location; try the Senses of the Algarve body scrub and wrap, which uses local sand, carob and orange oil. There's also a well-kept nine-hole golf course and a substantial Annabel Croft tennis academy for individual training, group lessons and tournaments. The main draw is Praia de Falesia beach, its buttery sands accessed by lift and boardwalk from the hotel grounds and running for more than three miles along the base of incredible cinnamon-coloured cliffs — the hotel has loungers and umbrellas here. Score 8/10Being set just back from Praia de Falesia gives Pine Cliffs a brilliant location for beach lovers, but there's little else close by and the immediate area is very built up with low-slung holiday accommodation. If you plan to stay on-site (and you easily could) then you don't need a hire car; get one though, and Zoomarine theme park is a 20-minute drive, while the resort of Albufeira can be reached in 15 minutes. Faro airport is a 40-minute drive. Price B&B doubles from £190Restaurant mains from £16Family-friendly YAccessible Y Helen Ochyra was a guest of Pine Cliffs Resort ( • Best holiday villas in Portugal• The best European hotspots to visit in 2025
