Site: El Caño Martín Peña, San Juan
Timeline: September 2018 – March 2019
Team: Marién Vélez, Lorna Mulero, Stephanie M. Soler
Local Partner: Proyecto Enlace del Caño Martín Peña

CONTEXT

The ENLACE Caño Martin Peña Project is an environmental and social justice initiative for the ecosystem restoration of the estuarine channel and its surrounding wetlands, to provide affordable and safe housing, resilient infrastructure, and quality public spaces to its 25,000 informal settlement residents. ENLACE has spent 15 years building partnerships: it involves hundreds of volunteers, dozens of grassroots organizations, over 100 private sector partners, and several local and federal institutions.

We are collaborating with Enlace to serve the Buena Vista Hato Rey community with our pilot project (RDN1).

PROCESS

Enlace and our team visited three candidate sites and selected one to kick-off the project, but due to illegal dumping had to revise the location for the stationary lighting. 

Over the course of three trips by our team and at the request of Enlace, one pole light was then installed on the existing playground “Parque de la Amistad“, and the remaining four were installed on a new communal public space created by the community. All pole locations were coordinated by the community representatives and installed by the constituents.

Our volunteers conducted the first Recreo de Noche workshop with a group of children at the “Mini Oratorio Los Hijos de Don Bosco” community center, and fifty portable lights were donated to the community center for future workshops and as a permanent community resource. 

Our team also conducted landscape lighting tests with sample solar floodlights, and will lead a final workshop with the community to help enhance the aesthetics of the new communal space with landscape lighting (pending funding).

PROJECT

Participatory events

1 workshop

Equipment donated

5 solar streetlights

50 portable lights