OLD MUTUAL OUT OF THE BOX PROGRAMME

VEGETABLE TUNNELS AT BOVET PRIMARY - ALEXANDRA

On the 5th of November 2008, over 30 learners, educators and ground staff from four Alexandra primary schools came together to address the issue of food security. The result was the installation of a shade net vegetable tunnel, housing close to a thousand vegetable plants, for Bovet Primary school in Alexandra.

The schools prime focus at this stage is to provide healthy meals to the learners at the school. 418 of these learners are supported by the school through the feeding scheme and twenty of these learners are supported with food all year round as they are from households without parents or any form of breadwinner.

The day involved training with the representative from the Robin Goode institute on aspects of vegetable tunnel management. Thanks to the enthusiasm of all participants the school has now a fully functional tunnel and will be harvesting their first crop in 6 weeks time. 

MORE EROSION CONTROL GARDENS AT EKHUKHANYISWENI PRIMARY- ALEXANDRA

You may remember that together with AON South Africa we developed a set of erosion control gardens for the school. These simple tyre gardens have worked amazingly well and the area has made huge strides towards full recovery. This year Aon teamed up with us again to install three more such gardens to tackle the next problem area. Once again the enthusiasm of the learners, educators and AON members was absolutely overwhelming and the gardens were completed in a very short time. Thanks again to AON for giving their time and resource towards this project.

ESKOM ENERGY AND SUSTAINABILITY PROGRAMME

COOKING WITH THE SUN IN MPUMALANGA

Through the Eskom energy and Sustainability Programme, Kim Webb has been busy building and installing giant solar cookers at various schools in the province. Schools all over the country are faced with an enormous challenge of cooking for hundreds of children every day, for some of these children this will be there only meal of the day. The result of this is that fuel and electricity costs have become exorbitant and taking an ever increasing part of a schools operational budgets. Three cookers have already been built by the learners themselves and installed at the schools. Four more will be installed in the upcoming months. Taking into account that each cooker will save around three tons of Carbon per annum that is already a saving of 21 tons of carbon per annum !!! If you would like to buy a solar cooker that really cooks phone Crosby at Sunfire Solutions (011) 624– 2432.
For more information on activities in Mpumalanga call Kim Webb ….

LIMPOPO CONSERVATION

FRIENDS OF THE HAENERTSBURG GRASSLANDS

A WESSA Friends Group, FROHG (Friends of the Haenertsburg Grasslands) is busy conserving an extremely important grassland in Limpopo Province . The last remnants of this grassland, called Woodbush Granite Grassland, are found between Ebenezer Dam (pictured) and the village of Haenertsburg , outside Tzaneen. Members of FROHG hold regular hacking parties to remove wattle, bugweed and other invasive aliens. They also maintain a 10 km hiking trail through the grassland, monitor medicinal plant collection and rehabilitate eroded areas. In 2008 they began a joint project with SAEON to monitor vegetation change related to climate change. SAEON is the South African Environmental Observation Network. For more information call Luke Perkins.

CHAT NEWSLETTER

Chat Newsletter - Spring 2008