CARDBOARD SUPERHERO – Koko Burgoa

Cochabamba, Bolivia – Castelnovo Monti

The non-profit association Enkarte was founded in Bolivia on 3^rd March 2012 with the aim of generating ecological and social awareness in the world. It promotes ecological and social conscience and provides therapeutic and occupational workshops for the creation of cardboard furniture, toys and accessories made entirely out of recycled materials.

Fast, you had to go fast. Produce, you had to produce and all the time life was going by under pressure. The communication firm I worked for was a crossroads of information, business and image. Every day an ever more powerful voice from within, a call to a different lifestyle, woke me and guided me towards a radical change.

I gave up everything: house, job, family, friends. My life as a wanderer was geared to others. I lived in various kinds of accommodation, hostels and shelters and I spent my days salvaging paper and waste materials from the rubbish bins, using them to forge new and surprisingly sturdy items.

Everybody was worried. My family couldn’t understand my determination or visualise the path that was so clear and well-tracked out in my mind. They realised what my intentions were a little later. It all stemmed from them, I had inherited that message of peace and hope from them and the only way to share it with the world was through Enkarte. This path led me to the Casa de los Niños in 2016 (http://www.milongaproject.org/ong/asociacion-casa-de-los-ninos-cochabamba-bolivia/) and it was there I first met Chiara. She really struck me, right from the start. She barely spoke, she hadn’t mastered the language yet and she was so intent on the children and the work to be done that I watched her silently from a distance for at least a year. I waited for her. A theatre performance forced us to work together and from then on, we got to know each other better, we fell in love. Bureaucracy separated us for almost a year, but now I share every day, points of view and principles with her. Getting married, living in Italy in this heavenly spot amongst woods, mountains and springs, far from the city traffic, was a childhood dream come true.

The love of people around us reinforces our project, just as nature does. Our mission is to offer our knowledge virtuously and give those who have nothing the chance to redeem themselves by making them realise that you can create everything from rubbish. With the Enkarte technique you can furnish your house, pass on your know-how to others and spread the method exponentially.

The family of Enkarte therapists is huge and has groups all over the world, people who are infected and, like cardboard superheroes, contaminate others who become independent and find a way out of extreme poverty using this technique.

Furthering this creed from the Apennines makes me a privileged person. It is with curiosity and pleasure that I observe the small workshops that every resident in these little villages owns. Fortunately, the art of preserving, mending and converting is still alive here. Now more than ever, humankind needs to go back to its origins, to nature in order to protect values and live in limitless harmony.

Italiano