For many, the Mondi-WESSA quiz is just a chance for young people to come together once a year in an enjoyable, meaningful manner and share knowledge and skills and compete with each other. And yet it is so much more than this!

For months, if not years, young people have access to the low-cost Mondi Share-Net E-Info library which covers the 5 major coastal and 5 major inland eco-systems. The E-Info library provides a range of useful, relevant booklets on environmental issues and 60 fact sheets on topical environmental concerns. It also provides a range of material on indigenous knowledge issues which helps us understand how people have always lived with, and in tension with, the issues and risks the environment offers. This “card-board library” is curriculum linked, is easily portable and can be packed away quickly. It only costs R150 and is even available in a CD-Rom format. It is an ideal resource to support a lesson and can be placed out in a class-room especially in a school context where resources and libraries are usually non existent. 60 percent of the quiz questions are sourced from the library so that resource poor schools are not at too much of a disadvantage.

Early ‘development’ quizzes get going as early as March each year. Everyone is invited and in some more rural regions of South Africa such as East Griqwaland and Northern KZN hundreds of participants and interested spectators walk miles to attend the local quiz. Although teams comprise 4 learners (usually supported by an adult or teacher) they needn’t be from the same school. A mixing of learners and schools in a constructive ‘environmental learning’ environment has indeed become synonymous with the nature and culture of the Mondi-WESSA quiz!

The mark of the quiz is not, therefore, the finals which are hosted by the University of Natal (Pietermaritzburg) each year. Neither is it the generous prizes that Mondi sponsors to some of the winners. It is the in-between-times when learners work together, study the environment, share ideas and come to appreciate the incredibly complex and diverse environment in which we all live. Learning about the environment and each other is a crucial step towards understanding the environment so that we may take better care of it