When it comes to environmental concerns our youngest generation is fast taking over the reins to assure our future. Thanks largely to the support of a caring team at WESSA Eco-Schools – the youth division of the Wildlife and Environment Society of South Africa – and their partnership with Sun International.
Exciting environmental projects are taking place at aspiring schools now across all the provinces where Sun International casinos are situated, and this month the focus is on the Breede Valley region which will see the launch of a two-year project at Bo Doorns Primary School.
Here young learners are setting new standards of caring for the earth, by giving back to the soil and supporting their own school financially with the proceeds.
Nestled in the rural village of De Doorns, Bo Doorns’ start-up initiative of learning to make compost to enrich the soil for veggies and fruit farming, and selling it to plough back the profits into the school’s running costs, caught the attention of the ‘WESSA-Sun International Eco-Schools’ project management team.
Impressed with the learners’ enthusiasm, WESSA‘s youthful team decided to reward the primary school with a supportive two-year education programme for the young eco-warriors that will enable them to understand more broadly a range of effects from climate change that are particularly relevant to South Africa.
Says Sakile Sithole, Schools and Youth Project Manager at WESSA, who will be in De Doorns for the launch on Tuesday next week, “climate change poses a global and pervasive threat that increases poverty and gender inequality, but South Africa is particularly vulnerable to the impacts related to water and food security, health, human settlements, infrastructure, and ecosystem services”.
The two-year project will support the school’s self-sustaining project by creating an eco-classroom where learners, teachers and the school leadership will use the Eco-Schools Seven Steps Framework to plan a way to building resilience in their school and community.
Adds Sakhile: “All provinces are experiencing changing rain patterns and increased severity of heatwaves, which affect health, terrestrial ecosystems, and water resources. But education can give people the skills and knowledge to be better prepared for, and more able to recover from, natural hazards.
“Education gives us a better awareness of risk, and the knowledge and skills to adapt flexibly. This project will enable the school to learn and adopt a stronger action approach to reducing their carbon footprint and be climate ready.”
The project will be launched on Tuesday 11 October with a celebration of World Efficiency Day and will be carried out for a minimum period of two years. The first year will focus on Health and Well-Being, a theme that will encourage the school to promote the health and well-being of learners and the wider community, and to make environmental connections to health and safety.
A healthy environment supports healthy living, and schools using the Eco-Schools Seven Steps Framework will be more able to understand the environmental connections to health, safety, and well-being.
The second year will focus on Biodiversity and Nature at the school where the Eco-club will focus on Indigenous plants and their role in biodiversity conservation.
