From 19 April to 3 May 1995, SAEPEJ brought to the US Maria Mbengashe, founder and director of the Community Environment Network in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. During her trip Maria met with urban environmental justice groups who found her visit useful in terms of connecting with the South African environmental justice movement. Maria went home with new ideas and inspiration from her meetings and tours here. While in the US, she participated in a conference at Dartmouth College; appeared on National Public Radio; interviewed on the Morning Show at WBAI (New York); spoke at Columbia University; visited the Toxics Release Inventory at Univ. Massachusetts at Lowell. The most exciting part of her visit was the immediate connections she made with groups and individuals in neighbourhoods such as the Dudley area in Roxbury; Woburn, MA; Brooklyn, West Harlem, and South Bronx, NY. She also briefed a number of foundations in New York at a breakfast hosted by the New World Foundation. Maria's trip was a pilot project which proved that these people-to-people exchanges are useful and necessary in the rebuilding of South Africa.
Maria Mbengashe speaks to a class of youth at
El Puente High School, Brooklyn, NY.