DVB: Rangoon trash alley gets a makeover

There’s no hiding Rangoon’s trash problem. The streets of Burma’s biggest city are often the scene of overflowing garbage bins and rubbish chucked carelessly into gutters. But behind apartments downtown, the problem skyrockets when one peers into the alleyways.

Enter a community group that views the trash-clogged alleys from a different perspective, eyeing these spaces as holding great potential. When social enterprise Doh Eain’s founder Emilie Röell suggested to her neighbours that she wanted to build a garden in their shared laneway, she was met with bewilderment and a wall of blank expressions.

“The idea of doing something in the trash alleyways is a bit alien,” says Röell. “They didn’t really understand what this was about and they thought it was quite a crazy idea.”