Scavengers
Conversation with conservationist Seema Mundoli and educator Lakshmi Karunakaran
SDG 11 Sustainable Cities and Communities
The first discussion took Darren Simpson’s “Scavengers” as an entry point to SDG 11 Sustainable Cities and Communities.
On 1st August, Seema Mundoli and Lakshmi Karunakaran spoke about "Scavengers"using the book to contextualise th relevance of SDG 11 in Bangalore, and cities all over India.
How is life for people who live their entire life in the shadows of others, yet without them the city could not survive? They are vital, yet invisible to most of us most of the time. Usually the conversations around people involved in waste management (wastepickers, landfill workers) are not empowering, especially in their representation in writing, which tends to be descriptive.
The YA novel by Darren Simpson, “Scavengers” allows us an ingenious approach to tackle this topic from a very different perspective. In Scavengers, old scavenger Babagoo left the city long time ago to bring up the boy Landfill in Hinterland, a post-industrial space reclaimed by nature. Landfill grows up in a world of his own until he starts breaking the rules.
Watch the discussion here, and purchase the book here!
This reading and book discussion is part of Reading for Change, an event series conceived by Champaca Book Store, Science Gallery Bengaluru and Bengaluru Sustainability Forum. The aim of this event series is to offer an entry point for the UN Sustainable Development Goals that goes beyond the academic and expert discussions.
About the Speakers
Seema Mundoli worked for the most part in conservation, and advocacy on issues of mining, land and forest rights, and education in tribal and rural landscapes. More recently she researches on the social and ecological interactions around urban commons especially in the current phase of increasing urbanization that the Indian cities are witnessing. She is also the co-author of the popular and critically praised Cities and Canopies, a book on trees in urban India. She is now a faculty at Azim Premji University.
Lakshmi Karunakaran is an educator and a communication professional based in Bangalore, India. She has worked with children experiencing social exclusion in government schools, special needs schools, remedial schools, and in disadvantaged communities. Through Hasiru Dala, an organization that works with informal waste pickers she currently heads the Buguri Community Library Project which is an after school library and art centre for over 700 children of waste-pickers in Bangalore, Tumkur and Mysore.