"I don't want my daugh­ter hus­tling like how I hus­tling right now. I wish she comes out bet­ter than the way I is right now," says a rugged, lean, tat­tooed teenag­er called Daryll Pa­ponet, who earns his liv­ing as a waste pick­er at the tox­ic Gua­napo Land­fill. He's one of many men who leap on trucks and scav­enge use­ful dumped items to re­sell; it's a tough life.

He's gut­sy and de­ter­mined, yet you can hear a sad­ness in his voice. He's bare­ly out of his own boy days.

Pa­ponet is one of sev­er­al spir­it­ed peo­ple fea­tured in A Bet­ter Place, an in­spir­ing one-hour doc­u­men­tary film mar­ry­ing good lo­cal mu­sic and sen­si­tive vi­su­al sto­ry­telling with five re­cent com­mu­ni­ty projects across T&T.

Pro­duced by Carv­er Bac­chus in 2015, di­rect­ed by Miquel Galofre, and script­ed by An­dre Ba­goo, A Bet­ter Place cov­ers five sep­a­rate en­vi­ron­men­tal-re­lat­ed com­mu­ni­ty projects while al­so show­cas­ing five lo­cal mu­si­cal acts. It is a soul­ful merg­ing of mu­sic, film and sus­tain­abil­i­ty is­sues in T&T com­mu­ni­ties fac­ing var­i­ous chal­lenges.

The sto­ries are full of op­ti­mism, hope, and re­al-world prac­ti­cal small projects which far too few of us have even heard about. They point the way to fu­ture pos­si­ble projects unique to the needs of dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties here–if com­mu­ni­ties take the ini­tia­tive.

The projects in the film demon­strate that with some good ideas, team­work, and a lit­tle fund­ing, self-help can be­come a re­al­i­ty rather than just a nice idea.

Along the way, the film gives us keen if brief glimpses of some peo­ple's lives. There's the griz­zled old dump scav­enger ad­dict­ed to co­caine, who wist­ful­ly dreams of a bet­ter life; there are strong women from Gua­napo, close to na­ture but seek­ing bet­ter liveli­hoods for their chil­dren in an area of few op­por­tu­ni­ties and ameni­ties; and we see rur­al To­ba­go teenagers awed by the won­ders of their own un­der­sea world which they are see­ing for the very first time, even though they've lived in To­ba­go all their lives.

Suc­cess­ful past projects

The film fea­tures an aquapon­ics project in Gua­napo; a ma­rine con­ser­va­tion ed­u­ca­tion pro­gramme by ER­IC (the En­vi­ron­men­tal Re­search In­sti­tute Char­lot­teville) in To­ba­go; the Cli­maQue­st board game on cli­mate change in­vent­ed at the Par­vati Girls Hin­du Col­lege in Debe; a Na­ture Seek­ers project to re­duce the alarm­ing­ly high, dai­ly tur­tle deaths from fish­ing net by­catch in Matu­ra; and a pa­per re­cy­cling project to em­pow­er and ed­u­cate dis­abled chil­dren in San Fer­nan­do.

All the projects in A Bet­ter Place were sup­port­ed by funds from the UNDP's GEF Small Grants Pro­gramme. Fund­ed by the Glob­al En­vi­ron­ment Fa­cil­i­ty (GEF), the Small Grants Pro­gramme pro­vides grants of up to US$50,000 di­rect­ly to lo­cal com­mu­ni­ties for projects with en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pacts on spe­cif­ic is­sues, name­ly bio­di­ver­si­ty; cli­mate change mit­i­ga­tion and adap­ta­tion; land degra­da­tion and sus­tain­able for­est man­age­ment; and in­ter­na­tion­al wa­ters and chem­i­cals.

Not many com­mu­ni­ties, though, are even aware of the Small Grants Pro­gramme. And too many peo­ple seem ei­ther in­tim­i­dat­ed by the idea of ap­ply­ing for a grant (they needn't be; help ex­ists for that), or seem to lack the dri­ve and com­mit­ment to fol­low through on their own project ideas, per­haps it­self a re­flec­tion of frag­ment­ed com­mu­ni­ties lack­ing the ca­pac­i­ty to man­age projects, even small ones.

Carv­er Bac­chus aims to change this, and in be­tween his oth­er com­mu­ni­ca­tions du­ties, he has been on the road to dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties since May, hold­ing work­shops and screen­ing the film A Bet­ter Place in or­der to show com­mu­ni­ties what is pos­si­ble. He's do­ing this out­reach work through his non-prof­it en­ter­prise, Sus­tain T&T, which has al­ready com­plet­ed four work­shops (in San Fer­nan­do, San­ta Cruz, the St Ann's hills and Suc­cess Laven­tille); the last ones will take place at UWI, St Au­gus­tine, and pos­si­bly To­ba­go. All work­shops are free and open to any­one in­ter­est­ed.

Carv­er Bac­chus is a qui­et, ar­tic­u­late man with 15 years of mar­ket­ing, ad­ver­tis­ing and man­age­ment ex­pe­ri­ence. With a BSc in Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and a sub­se­quent Diplo­ma in Mo­tion Pic­ture Di­rect­ing, he found­ed the non-prof­it en­ter­prise Sus­tain T&T in mid-2010 to in­form and ed­u­cate on sus­tain­able and green ac­tiv­i­ties. Among oth­er things, Sus­tain T&T helps to make and show ed­u­ca­tion­al films on en­vi­ron­ment and sus­tain­abil­i­ty, with its sig­na­ture event be­ing the an­nu­al Green Screen film shows.

Cel­e­brat­ing peo­ple–and hope

In a re­cent T&T Guardian in­ter­view at his St Clair work­space, Bac­chus said the film A Bet­ter Place is a ve­hi­cle to not on­ly pro­mote en­vi­ron­men­tal projects of the GEP Small Grants Pro­gramme, but al­so to help peo­ple con­nect, un­der­stand some is­sues, feel pride in their own pos­si­bil­i­ties, and cel­e­brate peo­ple in T&T who have been qui­et­ly do­ing some very good things in­deed.

"We start­ed pre-pro­duc­tion of A Bet­ter Place at the end of 2014; by March 2015 we were in­to pro­duc­tion. The most chal­leng­ing thing was de­cid­ing which projects to high­light from among the dozens of projects sup­port­ed by GEF over the years...Al­so, we want­ed to re­flect a di­ver­si­ty of places and com­mu­ni­ties," said Bac­chus. He em­pha­sised:

"It's not just about en­vi­ron­men­tal projects; it's al­so about the per­son­al side of things: why are peo­ple do­ing what they're do­ing? Who's around them, who's sup­port­ing them? One ques­tion we asked every­one was: How do you think we could make T&T a bet­ter place? We got so many dif­fer­ent an­swers; some hope­ful, some pes­simistic."

Bac­chus said the tal­ents of sev­er­al unique, good lo­cal artists and mu­si­cians added to the five-part, one-hour film, help­ing it con­nect cre­ative­ly and emo­tion­al­ly with lo­cal au­di­ences while cel­e­brat­ing lo­cal tal­ent. There were mu­sic per­for­mances by Ruth Os­man (with An­ders Kap­pel Ovre on gui­tar), Gillian Moore (with Shi­va Man­nick on tabla), Free­town Col­lec­tive, Sol­man, Black Loy­al­ty (with Sadi­ki Philips on gui­tar), and Pol Dun­yo.