Grassroots Resilient Stories
A NPO sharing and amplifying the stories of local communities building resilience from the ground up.
Taking Initiative...
Informal workers such as waste pickers make a substantial contribution to improving environmental conditions and facilitating social cohesion. Besides recycling and local farming significantly contributing to lowering carbon emissions and reducing the number of new materials being manufactured, it can also change the livelihoods of marginalized communities. The value of waste picking should be judged on these contributions and not on hierarchical market forces.
Our Goals
Mass Solidarity Movement is a national network that works alongside informal communities around the country, by sharing skills, experience and knowledge about sustainable and long-term initiatives and protections for informal workers.
CLIMATE ACTION
Informal workers are disproportionally impacted by climate change, yet contribute the least to carbon emissions. MSM works with Waste Pickers Movement in Makhanda to improve the living and working conditions for waste pickers who collect waste materials around town to resell. This is not limited to plastic, glass, paper and metals, but also any items that can be reused or turned into something new.
SUBSISTENCE GARDENING
MSM works with local informal communities to set up community gardens that can feed the families in the area. An unstable income makes providing nutritious meals highly difficult. Informal workers often fall ill from lack of nourishment. There are community farms on the Makhanda landfill and on a refugee camp near Kensington.
COMMUNITY CENTRES
Ntirhisano Community Centre (NCC) is a grassroots political movement operating on the principles of voluntary cooperation, direct action, and mutual aid. Ntirhisano Community Centre (NCC) is located on Albert Road in Salt River, Cape Town. After the Apartheid government bulldozed District Six in the 1950s and 1960s: Salt River remained the neighborhood-like enclave where people of colour lived side by side. Albert Road became a symbol of resilience, a reincarnation of the District Six’s popular culture of resistance. Workers from nearby industries, primarily textile, and their families flocked to Albert Road to buy goods and for recreational activities. They came from across apartheid’s black-only designated areas. Tragically Salt River was devastated by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF)’s structural adjustment program in the 1980s. This led to labor flexibility, the casualization of workers, and the collapse of the Cape Town textile industry. Today Salt River is home to many people from around the continent, and the spirit of struggle endures.
