One Person’s Trash Is Another’s Treasure. Resources vs Resourcefulness.

There Is No Such Thing As Rubbish

by the children playing in the street corner. Siem Reap, Cambodia. Photo by Luisa Go Shah

Point to Ponder: ‘If children grew up according to early indications, we should have nothing but geniuses.' Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Story Line: During our trip to Siem Reap in 2016, we saw these five little kids playing in a street corner. They had just released the model UC; convertible, all-wheel drive, thread controlled human pull car with the capability of carrying heavy load. Each one of them was taking turns in test driving this new model.

Reflection: The model UC (Unlimited Creativity) was the product of these kids’ imagination and the excellent team work. They had engaged in the creative use of resources (milk bottles, caps, wood sticks, pebbles themselves etc). All materials used in building this product were domestically produced and obtained at no cost from garbage can, trees and river bank.

And they seemed to be very happy enjoying their Made in Cambodia product.

Remembering the words of Great Teacher Tony Robbins: It's not resources but resourcefulness that ultimately makes the difference.

 

Republished with the comments of readers from the first publication dated July 14, 2016.

Comments

Recycle, Reuse, Reduce.

Posted by: Save our Planet | July 14, 2016 at 08:28 PM

Don't let this Benchmarks get to our management.
Soon they will replace us all, last of the survivors, with Cambodian kids.

Posted by: Wortied | July 14, 2016 at 10:05 PM

We experience it in Pulp industry in Indonesia (or anywhere else). Pulp production produces good and poor quality pulp (off grade). Our Norwagian Pulp mill manager announce there's no off grade in my Mill. Off grade has its uses like using for brown papers, Cartons, paper bags, etc. It has a price.

Posted by: Suresh Shah | July 15, 2016 at 02:41 AM

Make Cambodia Great Again initiative? 😂

Posted by: Rajan | July 15, 2016 at 07:14 AM

Imagination, Visualization and Creativity are skills that are all different and some children are allowed to learn them, some learn them on their own and some it is just part of their DNA.
Imagination is the faculty or action of forming new ideas, or images or concepts of external objects not present to the senses. Imagination and dreaming can coincide to help people feel something they want to do. Visualization is the formation of mental visual images or actually sting pictures in your mind of what you are want to do, say or build. Some people have a hard time visualizing, some have a difficult time visualizing in color or more than two dimensionally but kids allowed, taught and encourage learn to take what they imagine and put it in mental pictures in three dimensions and /or put it on paper or express it through art. Many adults have lost that skill. Creativity is the ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships, or the like, and to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods, interpretations, etc.; originality, progressiveness, or imagination. Many children and some adults are creative but many are taught to "stay within the lines" or "don't imagine things you can't, shouldn't or don't have the ability to do. Children in the right environments learn all three more easily than adults mostly because they have learned that they "can't."

Posted by: Lonnie Hurst | July 15, 2016 at 07:19 AM

For you every encounter is a learning experience.

Thanks for continuing to share your experiences.

Posted by: Jason | July 15, 2016 at 07:51 AM

Anand - I applaud your creativity along with that of these kids. I may have seen a similar scene several times on a trip to India- but I could never have "seen" it in the way you have, much less described it in this way.
Fun can be had without high tech fancy gadgets. Its great to see that these kids actually are outdoors- and looking around at the surroundings-( vs. a screen) and creating - without parental interference :)
I second the sentiments from @ Jason

Posted by: Madhuri | July 15, 2016 at 09:21 AM

This is such a great reminder/lesson… we spoil our kids when we don’t need to and we ruin their natural imaginative powers.

Take care

Posted by: BHSC | July 15, 2016 at 10:15 AM

I noticed this photo among a set that you shared among a group of friends. I was very impressed but didn't mention it to you. So how nice to see the photo given a spotlight in FridayReflections!

I am reminded of an adage I once heard about parenting, which is attributed to Dear Abby (Abigail van Buren, real name Pauline Phillips):
“If you want your children to turn out well, spend twice as much time with them, and half as much money.”

Posted by: Levi's | July 15, 2016 at 04:01 PM

Pardon me but the model in above picture seems two wheel drive.
Still a great idea and superb reflection. Thanks

Posted by: Auto Fan since childhoodh | July 15, 2016 at 05:04 PM

Today, or so it appears to me, time for children is too structured (art, gymnastics, sports, dance, scouts, music, etc. ) and although some of this is needed, there needs to be time for kids to just learn how to entertain themselves doing things like: playing in the creek, climbing trees, breaking glass bottles in an illegal dump, knocking down bees' nests, building tunnels with hay bales in the barn, riding your bike to the fishing hole. As Levi posted above, all these things can be accomplished with little or no money. When I was a kid, when we went fishing, we each bought a can of soda and a big of chips for $.25 to take along with us for the 4+ mile ride.

Posted by: Mark Dennen | July 16, 2016 at 04:30 AM

 

Comments

[Carol]

Ready made toys are spoon fed stuff. Shows general prosperity but less valuable for developing the child's creativity. Signs of the times.

[Shardamandir Friend]

Superb creativity 👏👏

[Gloria]

What a great idea

[SPP]

Love this !!!!

[Maybe I'm Just Getting to be an Old (get off my lawn) Curmudgeon]

When I was growing up, we had a mix of things to work with: the "pre-made" store-bought fad of the month stuff - if you could afford it, and the pile off stuff in the drawer with bits and pieces that you made things with out of your imagination.

Today, at least in the USA, most of the things children are given are the premade fad of the month club "toys" under the guise of "children specific"; "gender-specific"; and/or "pre-set 'educational' use".

Does anyone remember when Legos was just a box with a pile of parts and you made what YOU wanted to make? Now, Legos come in pre-designed packages for specific end uses. Yes, a child can still take those items apart and make new things, but now the design box tells you what it should be. Does this stifle creativity?.

[Cebuana]

Thanks for sharing Anang... hopefully, I get to visit these islands too... I sure like to explore....
Regards

[JL- A lifelong Friend]

This is such a wonderful reflection. Having grown up in a poor farm family, I thoroughly enjoyed most all the things nature and sadly other more affluent humans discarded. Self made toys and explorations filled my days. Sadly, today, so many families think the way to raise a child is through a very structured, technology stuffed, pre-fabricated daily routine. Nature and its free wealth of learning opportunities goes to the wayside . I have vivid memories of my daughter and the neighborhood kids playing with discarded boxes; forts made of old sheets constructed all around the house; totally ruining clothes by playing in mud puddles in the backyard when we were remodeling...

[Levi's]

The creativity of children (and adults who choose to challenge themselves) is unbounded, infinite.
In contrast the resources we have on Earth are increasingly limited, as the population grows, the developing nations modernize, and consumerism continues to expand as if limits don't exist. Surely, we, humanity, limit our maximum potential as a civilzation by exploiting each other rather than embracing cooperation and fairness.

Yet, we've certainly reached a point at which even the staunchest deniers of anthropomorphic climate change are coming around...
As engineers, mankind has found ingenious ways to modify, synthesize, and extract many different materials. We have superb solutions based on exotic materials. Mother nature works differently. She basically designs everything from the same basic organic materials. Nearly everything is completely recycled (not merely "recyclable") in nature. We think we are in control of nature with our impressive factories, megafarms of monocrops, hydroelectric dams (zero carbon, but only at the expense of disrupting entire ecosystems). We can build new things and improve them, much, much faster than Mother Earth who counts in centuries of evolution and eons of geology.
But at this rate, we will be gone in a few centuries, while planet Earth chugs along unceasingly. Humanity may be just a flash in her pan. Brilliant yes, but short-lived. Clever but not quite wise enough...to grasp the meaning of Aesop's fable of the tortoise and the hare.

[MC]

Thanks Anand for sharing the story of the joy of Siem Reap children’s creativity! Indeed resourcefulness is as important if not more so than resources!

[Beth Wu]

Children are so awesome creates treasure from their imagination

[Entrepreneur from Penang]

This is great. This unlimited, open-ended play. Child-led play.It’s just amazing.