Sticky Business

Barry Malin MPP 1999, Colin Rule MPP 1999

When 1999 graduates Barry Malin and Colin Rule became friends during their first year at the Kennedy School, it wasn’t participation in the same PIC or similar career aspirations that brought them together. It was something altogether unusual. Something slightly sticky. Glue.

At the time, Malin saw a BBC documentary on the widespread — but little known — problem of inhalant abuse among homeless street children in Central America, specifically, the abuse of addictive and highly toxic shoe glue. He learned that 20 million kids spend all day, every day, inhaling glue products with devastating end results — irreversible brain and optic nerve damage, loss of bone marrow, and eventually, death. He knew he had to do something, so he turned to Rule, his techno-wizard classmate, for help in starting a Web site campaign against the glue’s largest manufacturer, U.S.-based H.B. Fuller and Company.

The project exploded during their second year at the KSG, developing into a charitable organization called Shine A Light: the Project for Street Children’s Health (www.shinealight.org). Now the group works directly with health clinics and outreach organizations all over Central America, sends refurbished computers to NGOs, and recently sponsored two fellows to spend the summer working with street kids in Nicaragua and Venezuela. As a sign of how big they’ve gotten, they were even selected to be one of the social/political action groups featured at Woodstock 1999.

Q Is this type of glue available in the United States?

BM Absolutely not. Actually, it is the solvents in the glue products rather than the adhesives that are toxic. The most dangerous and widely abused substances are Toluene and Cyclohexane. Toluene is a restricted substance in the United States — you need an EPA permit to dispose of it. But it is all over the streets of Central America, re-packaged in baby food jars. We in the United States bear some responsibility for this problem because the majority of these products are manufactured by U.S.-owned companies.

CR The only analogous situation involved Testors, a U.S. company that used to manufacture a type of model airplane glue that was widely abused. In response to public pressure, however, the company changed its formulation of the product in the 1970s to include a foul-smelling additive, which discouraged sniffing.

Q Is it really that dangerous?

BM Without question, abusing these substances is more dangerous than abusing what we consider to be "hard" drugs such as heroin and crack. Sniffing these substances will literally destroy parts of your brain, and this can happen with relatively little use.

Q Why glue?

BM It lessens much of the discomfort of living on the street, particularly hunger, and it is cheap. These children exist at the absolute margin of society, and their lives are extremely difficult.

Q Did your KSG education help?

BM I have been amazed by how well my education at the Kennedy School prepared me for these tasks. I have had to draw on all of the skill areas that the MPP curriculum is based on: advocacy, policy analysis, and management. I don’t think that we would have ever taken this on if it weren’t for our KSG backgrounds.

CR Absolutely. Doing this project is putting into use what they taught us. It’s taking action to make change happen. This project is making things happen.