Volunteers from Mary Waters High School and Rhodes University spent last week's public holiday hard at work, cleaning up a section of the Kowie Ditch.
Volunteers from Mary Waters High School and Rhodes University spent last week's public holiday hard at work, cleaning up a section of the Kowie Ditch.
Together with the Rhodes students and Awarenet staff, the 14 Grade 8 pupils, who are Awarenet members, started at their school and worked their way down the rubbish-strewn river.
They filled up their plastic bags very quickly, before tucking into sandwiches donated by Pick n Pay. Awarenet is a community programme that runs projects in Grahamstown high schools throughout the year.
The Workers' Day Mary Waters anti-littering campaign was co-ordinated by Rhodes student Sanele Ntshingana. Its aim was to educate the community about littering and get pupils to take on the role of “environmental police”.
“We are teaching the learners so that they can educate their parents," said Ntshingana.
"This is a long-term initiative, because a lot of people here don’t understand the dangers of littering and dumping rubbish."
The project also staged a drama, highlighting the problems of litter. Ntshingana said such education was very important, because of attitudes at local schools.
“[The learners] think that cleaning up rubbish is the caretaker’s responsibility. They make him clean up the school."
"We need to teach them that it’s not his problem. They need to just pick it up and put it in the bin,” he said.
