El Caribe provides us with some respite from the gloom and doom of the day’s news with the encouraging story of the La Zurza neighborhood, located on the Isabela river bank under the Jacinto J Peynado Bridge in Santo Domingo. This part of the city has been the setting for an initiative funded by the European Union, with the involvement of 23 local community organizations. Its aim is to clean up the area, which is in a particularly severe state of filth and decay. Residents complain that a plot adjacent to the local school is used as a dumping ground for derelict cars, domestic appliances and even dead animals. The new project will consist of a refuse collection program for recycling, which will be carried out by community members (10 collectors and 40 promoters) in the areas that the municipal refuse trucks cannot access. Each household will contribute RD$1 per day to the scheme. The newspaper’s editorial hails the project as “an excellent social initiative. A good example of how people can improve their neighborhood, their city or their country, without waiting for others to do it for them.”