Restore key wetlands & Uru Uru Lake  |  Bolivia

The Uru Uru team is a community organisation focused on restoring an important wetland in Bolivia, Uru Uru Lake. The Lake has been detrimentally affected by nearby hazardous mining activities, plastic pollution, and climate change. As a community, they are working on the restoration of Uru Uru Lake through an eco-friendly solution based on their traditional knowledge. They build floating rafts from the plastic waste that is thrown into the lake. These floating rafts are used as sustainers where a local plant called Totoras is secured, and then the rafts with the Totoras are placed into the lake. Totoras are native aquatic plants that, through a phytoremediation process, absorb heavy metals from the polluted waters of the Uru Uru Lake.

The Uru Uru Team created a community garden to protect the community's food sovereignty, where they raise vegetables and fruits because the mining company destroyed their soils, making it no good for healthy food crops. The garden produces enough crops to help their cause be somewhat self-sustaining to fund the implementation of more floating rafts in the Uru Uru Lake.

The Uru Uru Team leads community dialogues to galvanise community action. The Uru Uru Team is pressuring the Bolivian government to stop mining activities.

The fundraising target is AUD$6500. The funding will be used to:

> Implement 1000 floating rafts with the native aquatic plants.

> Expand the size of our community garden by diversifying the variety of vegetables and fruits increasing to 2 varieties of vegetables and 1 variety of fruit.

> Arrange 3 environmental awareness campaigns into universities and schools to stop the accumulation of plastic and have a direct way that they can donate us to build the floating rafts.

> Conduct follow-up to the actions that we have presented as a community and push the Oruro government to work into the implementation of policies, and laws that can ban the mining activities.

> Purchase 40 x workwear appropriate for conservation activities.