Adventist Academy Removes 240 Tons of Garbage in Cairo

From ANN, December 16, 2015: It is not unusual to see children romping in towering mounds of garbage on the dust-blown roads outside Nile Union Academy in Cairo, Egypt.
In some areas, the trash rises to a height of eight feet (2.5 meters) and burns day and night with a toxic smoke, choking the neighborhood.
But the scene has started changing over the past three months as students and faculty members of the Seventh-day Adventist school implemented an ambitious plan for waste disposal, recycling and environmental education in the community.
The results have stunned local residents and government officials, and other schools and municipalities in Egypt are now looking to the academy as a model for their own new programs.
“The No. 1 public health problem in Egypt today is sanitation,” said Ronylson Freitas, an Adventist and environmental management expert from Brazil who was brought in by local church leaders to tackle the garbage problem. “From the very beginning, I believed that the responsible disposal of waste would improve the daily lives of people.”
The garbage had grown to become not only an issue of physical well-being but also mental health, with people showing signs of depression from living amid the waste, church leaders said. But the local government lacked the financial and human resources to address with the mounting problem.
People living near the academy saw the well-cared-for campus and began to plead with school leaders to find a way to resolve the garbage problem.
THINK GREEN
At the request of the Adventist denomination’s Egypt-Sudan Field, Freitas first visited Nile Union Academy to assess the situation in 2014. He initially planned to visit Egypt every six months to engage in short, 30-day projects, but then he changed his plan.
“It seemed impossible to work on this issue only every six months,” he said. “Changing the mindset and culture requires time to build relationships, teach and working together daily.”
After extensive discussions with the Egypt-Sudan Field, Freitas and his wife, Brunna Freitas, decided to move to Egypt and establish an organization called Think Green.
“We saw not only the visible trash project but also a huge invisible opportunity to build bridges with the community, its leaders and government officials,” said Kleyton Feitosa, president of the Egypt-Sudan Field.
Academy students and staff embraced Freitas’ vision quickly and formed a Think Green team.
The first challenge was to clean up an area that ran 260 feet (80 meters) along the academy’s north wall. This was where piles of garbage rose to eight feet in height and emitted toxic smoke around the clock. The academy’s team charged into the task, picking away at the heaps every day for 10 days until they had cleared 240 tons of garbage. At the academy’s request, municipal trucks came regularly to cart away the collected trash.
Although neighbors had sought the academy’s help, they watched the efforts with skepticism at first, said Ron Clark, executive secretary of the Egypt-Sudan Field.
“But when the community saw the continuing commitment of Mr. Rony” as Ronylson Freitas is known — “to be out there with his team collecting the garbage for municipal trucks, local community leaders and members started recognizing the dedication of the team,” Clark said.
Many people living in the neighborhood have stopped tossing trash in the street, waiting instead for the trucks to arrive before bringing out their waste, he said.
Freitas spoke with delight about the joy of passing cars and pedestrians in seeing the cleanup workers make a difference. Some described the changes as a miracle.
“Cars pass by honking to demonstrate their joy and gratitude,” he said. “Some stop and people get out and see the cleanup work closer. Passersby shout their greetings.”
A MODEL FOR EGYPT
Local leaders are talking about finding funding to continue the cleanup. Freitas proposed that a playground for local children be built on the cleared land and a government official has approved US$32,000 toward the project.
Other schools and municipalities are looking to follow the example of the academy. Local public schools have asked Freitas to teach their students about waste management and recycling. They are impressed with a water heating system that Freitas built on the academy campus using recycled plastic water bottles and natural resources for generating thermal energy.
The Think Green team is now planning to build a meeting place, the Think Green Recycling Center, to raise environmental awareness through seminars and craft workshops with recyclable materials for the local community.
“Community leaders told me that our school is more respected now than ever before because of Mr. Rony’s humility and his efforts with the Think Green project,” Clark said.
That’s just what principal Richard Doss has been praying for.
“We want the academy to be known in the community as the place that environmental restoration began,” Doss said. “This project has opened new opportunities for us to be involved in the community.”
Adventist News Network (ANN) is the official news service of the denomination’s world headquarters in Washington, DC.
Amazing! What a fantastic story and witness. It’s too bad there are so many anti-Adventist commenters on the AToday website who get lockjaw when they see stories like this about the good fruits of the Adventist faith. Sadly, most of those commenters seldom have stories to tell about how their “faith” is transforming lives around them.
There are Adventist haters in many places. Of course they will come to this comment area to vent their disrespect.
It is my experience 70% of the negative comments come from people who had issues related to their dislike for a church teaching. They wanted to be part of a group that made them feel “special” but didn’t like something that would affect their lifestyle so they had to develop an issue against a church member who was mean, or judgmental, or “hurt my feelings”.
Satan watches and listens for people like that in the hope he can use them do divide the church or at the least, find fault with the members. That suggests to outsiders that there must be something wrong with the church if it is hurting members and driving them away.
The church I attend now has two such people who have stopped attending. They have joined other churches and I get feedback that tell how mean our members are. Or they are judgmental. One fellow insists we repeatedly ignored his hand up during prayer requests.
Satan will use any mouthpiece willing to do his bidding.
I agree. And I think these students are the best witness we can have in the Middle East. Helping is the best PR we can have. Just make sure they know we are Christians–by our love.
What a blessing.
Adventists were able to demonstrate a way to improve the lives of people living nearby.
It is really quite sad that some civilizations that existed long before America became a developed country are not able or do not know how to deal with issues that are commonplace here.
It saddens me to learn there are people in supposedly civilized countries who still do not have basic things we take for granted.
Hopefully this will cause the people to want to learn more about these amazing Adventists who did so much to improve the environment.
The types of things which these students are doing — helping improve their communities in practical ways — should be a prime reason why the Adventist Church exists.
Erv, Any humanist, Buddhist, or atheist can pick up garbage. The primary reason any “church” should exist is to preach Christ and him crucified. If it doesn’t exist for that reason, it’s not really a church.
Adventists have been picking up garbage for a long time. Youth groups were doing it [literally] 40 years ago in Glendale, CA. How is the denomination doing there,nowadays?
Many people in Asia are looking for an identity, trying to “find themselves.” “Christianity” is an option for some; nevertheless, people who describe themselves as Christians don’t believe in the death and resurrection of Christ. Regardless of how they perceive themselves, they are not Christians, have no claims on eternal life.
An acquaintance of mine was dismissed from the Methodist ministry many years ago. He identified himself as an altruist; his wife was,more or less,an enemy of the gospel but both were respected participants in the Vedanta society, a hodge podge of polytheistic vagary. Lovely people, good parents, successful? yes. Christians, ???
The problem is that we Adventists have been so exclusively focused on preaching that we’ve become irrelevant to our communities. Doing things like picking-up garbage helps believers re-connect with the many opportunities surrounding us to improve the lives of others in our communities. The ministry of Jesus was focused on improving the lives of individuals and thus the larger community, so what those students did was following the model of Jesus. Why should we expect God to bless our preaching if we’re not doing the life improving He wants us doing first?
Say Hansen, Christian ‘church’ organisations have been preaching Christ and Him crucified for two thousand years (despite what GC says). Do you think that a johnny come lately group which gets all excited by what is essentially theological trash and builds a system of so-called theology on it, namely, IJ, Sabbath as seal and the resultant Judaising, (which Paul says is the enemy of the Gospel)… do you think that group should do some soul-searching and throw out its trash? Yes, I am being judgemental, just as you have judged another to be an enemy of the gospel. Kinda handy that the ‘rubbish’ metaphor so neatly fitted in here, don’t you think?
Psychologists typically define altruism as a selfless interest for the good and welfare of others, that leads to such prosocial behaviors as cooperation, helping and sharing. Picking up trash and providing this type of service for our fellow human beings is a good thing. Those who display courage and generosity especially in the face of barriers are considered heroically altruistic.
For Adventist Christians however, such explanations are at best partial and incomplete. Christian anthropology sees the possibility of synergy, that is, a cooperation between the grace of God and human nature. Human nature is such that when man cooperates with God, altruism can rise to high levels (heroic altruism) that exceed the mundane levels of social cooperation. The overriding motive for true committed Christians is the love of God and all mankind that reaches from the depths of our hearts with the same love that God loves us. Dr. Luke refers to this special love: “But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return” (Luke 6:35, emphasis added).
Sam, If i were living in a Moslem society where preaching Christ might result in my decapitation, picking up garbage might seem like an effective “ministry”. It’s a means to an end however, not an end in itself.
In places like Los Angeles, it’s a loser’s approach to gospel work, when we can’t come up with something more relevant to the target audience, unless you are targeting people who live amidst garbage. Problem is that once you clean up the garbage, many will find another messy place to live because they like living around garbage rather than working, being temperate, etc.
Serge, Adventism can start cleaning house by apologizing to Dr. Ford. Until it does that, it will continue its descent into obscurity, homosexuality, feminism, etc.
I’m so glad the church has not “cleaned house” by apologizing to Dr. Ford. I lived through that tumult and know from personal experience that Dr. Ford’s crowd were “all lined up” to change the church, and any of the rest of us who worked for the church and didn’t fall into place were to be disposed of…in different fields of service both my Dad and I were targeted; but, thank the Lord, they were unsuccessful! I guess I should scribble out a review of that time, especially when I read “poor boy” complaints about how supposedly hard the church was on the good Doc from Australia…
David, A lot of people were offended by the gospel, others were richly blessed. I thank God I was much blessed by the Scriptural expositions Dr. Ford offered. If you were not, so sorry for you. Ugly reviews of church politics, paycheck worries and job security don’t interest me. Gospel preaching does.
David, can you please elaborate on your comment that “Dr Ford’s crowd” lined up to dispose of those who didn’t believe the gospel he was preaching? Did Ford himself target you? Did Good News Unlimited officials target you? Your words “crowd” and “lined up” give the impression there were significant numbers who were determined to get rid of you and your father. How many people targeted you and your father? What did this “crowd” do to target you? Did this “crowd” target a significant number of people or was it the two of you?
I’m wondering if your manner of objecting to Dr Ford’s gospel offended the gospel believers close to you.
My observations as a minister during the 1980s indicated that Ford himself was a Christian gentleman who practiced what he preached, but those who opposed him showed their true colors to be quite unchristian, even malicious.
David, You may or may not know that Dr. Erwin Gane was terminated from his teaching position at PUC in the aftermath of Dr. Ford’s tenure there. It was a very unpleasant experience. Numerous people also lined up against Dr.Gane. He was unemployed for several years. Even though he had a PhD in church history, when PUC needed a teacher for church history, they had the school librarian with one year undergraduate church history 20 years before teach the class. Dr. Gane was radioactive to the point that the school would rather defraud the students of their tuition than allow him to teach.
In spite of the difficulty the Gane family was thrown into, Roy Gane, to my knowledge, has publicly maintained a charitable attitude toward the Fords, wishing him well on special occasions, etc.
As late as the year 2000, at churches with numerous Amazing Facts devotees, reviling Dr. Ford was a shibboleth. People who knew virtually nothing about him or his message divined that opposing Dr. Ford put them in good graces with local church leaders.
This stuff is unbelievable. If you truly oppose the gospel preaching of Dr. Ford, you are free to do that I never got the idea that he was a spiteful or vindictive person.
I agree. Roy Gane is charitable towards Des Ford and the feeling is mutual. Roy doesn’t carry the baggage of animosity that his father carried from early days. Repeatedly, Erwin Gane asked for financial help from the Australasian Division to further his studies but the Division was fully committed to assisting Ford with his studies and refused Gane. At the time it seemed to me that Gane was annoyed with this situation. I think his ongoing animosity was exacerbated by the appeal of Ford’s gospel and the traditional SDA perfectionism that Erwin Gane and his father, Roy, preached. I was the pastor at the church where his father attended and, on one occasion, I had my arm twisted to allow Erwin to preach his perfectionism.