March of Hope for Decent Housing

On Saturday, November 17th, I chased a group of hundreds of people all around Santo Domingo, Ecuador...

I was acting as photographer for a Habitat publicity and fundraising event: The First March of Hope for Decent Housing.

Jefferson Perez, (below left) the country´s first Olimpic medalist, lead the event and raised the level of awareness for Habitat´s walk, multiple-fold. Perez is a speed-walker from the city of Cuenca. Cuenca is located South of Quito, in the Andes.
The day before the walk, Daniel (a co-worker, below) and I folded event t-shirts for hours!!

The night before the event, we held a press conference in which Perez was pressed for his views on housing, politics, Ecuador as a country and athletisism in Ecuador. I was really impressed with his answers to the press and he spoke quite a bit about the country´s peoples´ responsibility to take upon themeselves a change before expected the government, and the country, to change.

For some reason, I was targeted to partake in a radio interview...twice! That was definately my first national "pubic" appearance speaking in Spanish... (but has not been the last...); I am not sure if they aired or not! First the reporter interviewed me at the press conference, then again during the walk to get some "on-site feedback."

During the walk, through the high-interest of the press: tv, radio and written, we accomplished the organization´s goal of raising awareness about themeselves, and the issues that Habitat faces.

Perez signed hundreds of shirts, posed for hundreds of pictures and took the stardom in stride. Parents came out to the streets with their kids and camaras with exclamations of "there he is!".

Because I was running around with a video camera, and my camera... a co-worker assigned two military high school students to be my "body-guards"... I think they had fun with the post and I didn´t have to worry about watching my back with the equipment. Here I am with my "guarda-espaldas."

The walk lasted at least three hours and it was REALLY hot, Habitat passed out bags of water. These are common at large events around here... and seem like a pretty smart idea:

They creat less trash and are probably less expensive too!

After the walk there were plenty of formalities, speaches, and some musical and dancing performances. Here´s a local HS dance team and a group of children performing an andinan dance. I thought the younger kids had the best rythm... they were really good!