Annual Club Conferences are a great success

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Project 90 club coordinators Daniel, Happy and Nqobile have been working their socks off since the start of January to make our annual Club Conferences in Western Cape, Gauteng and Kwa-Zulu Natal a success. On the outer shell the three events were vastly different, creating their own rhythms and energies fed by the contrasting personalities of club members, teachers and coordinators working in the diverse environments of each region. Nevertheless at the core a strong thread tied them together, each with the objective to plant the seeds of inspiration so that the clubs could go back to their schools ready to take action and launch their new carbon cutting projects for 2012. Continue reading →

Solar power shines in Muizenberg

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Each staff member received a sum of money to help us reduce our carbon footprint as part of Project 90’s renewable energy demonstration sites project. Daniel, our Western Cape Clubs Coordinator, tells us about what he chose to spend his R10,000 renewable energy allowance on. Continue reading →

P90 flash mobs Silvermine

2010 has been a busy year for the Core Clubs in Cape Town. In April and May the clubs took part in two alien plantation hacks at the Kenilworth Racecourse Conservation Area, followed by a visit to Goedgedacht Farm for World Environment Day on 5^th June. Then in November two clubs took part in the Children’s Radio Workshop on climate change. Throughout the year the clubs have worked on their own projects, aiming to reduce their schools carbon footprint. They’ve really done some amazing work and everybody at Project 90 looks forward to an exciting 2011. 

It’s quite incredible that Cape Town can be warm, sunny and windless for days on end, however when you plan a day to hold an event the south easter decides to blast its way over the mountain. In fact the weather was perfect for hiking, but for swimming it was up to the brave, namely myself and Art from Waldorf Constantia to take to the waters of the Silvermine Dam. For the afternoon we sat on the rocks, ate fruit and cake, chatted and planned our first of many flash mobs.

A Sunday afternoon at 1:30 pm is prime time for families to eat their picnics and gaze at the stunning scenery, so we decided to take over the Dam(n) Wall and create a little buzz. Everybody lined up on the wall, took their positions and started a rhythm, becoming faster and faster, until we sent a Mexican wave down the line followed by Project 90s tag – Cut Carbon, Dare to Change.

It certainly caused a little stir in the tranquil setting of Silvermine. Watch this space for much more to come in 2011!!

 Daniel Robinson, Western Cape Club Coordinator

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Winning Project 90 Clubs – What did they get up to?

Curious to know a little bit more about the Project 90 winning clubs, and what sort of ideas they had and projects they implemented? Our regional clubs coordinators have written a little about each club for us, so read on to find out more.

Gauteng: Happy Khambule

Brescia House Primary School:

Brescia House Primary School - Johannesburg

Alison Jennings is the teacher behind the Earthkeepers; she is the spearhead and inspiration for the 22 girl horde. Brescia House is also an Eco-school and boasts a number of eco-projects on the go, including being a Project 90 Club. The variety of projects stem from environmental awareness to active carbon cutting.

The most intriguing project this year was that of a wormery and it has to be said, it has raised a few eyebrows including my own.  The Earthkeepers truly diversify their efforts, and deliver with outstanding results. It is not surprising that the Earthkeepers initiated a printer cartridge recycling project with Green Office, were they won 5 trees and cash for being so active and collecting over 500 cartridges and still counting… Earthkeepers never miss an opportunity to make the most of the moment from fantastic awareness campaigns on energy/water/biodiversity with posters and announcements in assemblies to turning Earth Hour into a spectacle.

A lot can be said about the Earthkeepers and their mentor Alison, but that would be downplaying their work, rather let the results speak for themselves. Congratulations to the Earthkeepers for their merit award.

Northcliff High School

Northcliff High School - Johannesburg

Colleen Rood, Elizabe Leeuwner and a 20 teen-powered group make up The Green Team.  The Green Team was formed only last year with the motto ‘if you love nature, come make a difference’. The aim is a balance of community type activities e.g. school ‘greening’ projects and learning experiential activities.

This league of eco-heroes started the year off with assessing their own carbon footprint at home and then at school, which is how they combined forces with Project 90 by 2030. This year was an eye opener which prompted some of the learners to encourage their parents to become carbon aware and to make changes at home.

The Green Team did not stop there, oh no, this was only the beginning; they did a survey of where the school needed to improve to reduce the carbon footprint. Water and electricity were identified as the two focus areas. The Team assisted with working out the school’s water and electricity usage in 2009 from the accounts for the competition audit. They were shocked at how big the school’s carbon footprint was.

The projects embarked on by the Team will be continued next year and the school water and electricity usage monitored. The school will aim to reduce its carbon footprint by 10%. Thus working on awareness amongst learners and teachers, where monitoring will be the order of the day. Again simplicity is the key and brings great results from light bulb changes, and doing feasibility studies, then the results communicate to the school through posters and talking to their peers.

Kyla Davis of Project 90 by 2030 was a great support and assisted with motivating the learners in getting projects going this year. This was a year of starting to get the school more carbon friendly and judging by their merit award, more can be expected from the champions of green justice in 2011!

KZN: Mathew van Lierop

St Anne’s

St Anne's - KZN Midlands

Rory Pennefather overseas a very enthusiastic group of learners from St Anne’s school in the KZN Midlands. The clubs has been hugely effective in enthusiastically cutting electricity use in the schools boarding houses through raising awareness of energy waste and turning off lights and electrical equipment not in use. This simple campaign has contributed to the school cutting their energy use by 10% from last year – a remarkable achievement! The club also supports a very active recycling programme on the school grounds – one that has finally taken off after much effort to resolve collection challenges in this part of the country. On top of this, the club has made great use of the wide variety of Project 90 resources to improve the knowledge of the all learners at the school, and encourage active and whole school participation in the great initiatives that the school has set up. Well done on being the only KZN school to receive an award this year, and good luck for the exciting projects you have in the pipeline for 2011.

Western Cape: Daniel Robinson

Somerset College

Somerset College has now been an established Project 90 Club for the past two years and each year they are becoming stronger and stronger. This year, was wonderfully led by Emily Chuchman and Jean Malherbe, supported by their faithful teacher Kathryn Kruyshaar. In July, the school received their second eco flag as part of the Eco Schools Network. To mark the occasion, Emily and Jean gave a speech, joined by other members of the club singing a rendition of the 3Rs (Reduce Reuse Recycle) by Jack Johnson.

As well as bringing awareness to their peers at school, the club sought to take action and create a number of recycling bins around the campus as a means to reduce their waste carbon footprint and thus make valuable carbon savings. The bins were old paint buckets found around the school. They resprayed them and chose strategic places where fellow students and teachers would use the bins the most. The recyclable waste is then picked up by a reputable company and taken off to a recycling plant. Next year the club will be led by Alex Forrester and Adrian Goemans, we wish them the best of luck and look forward to further carbon reductions next year at Somerset College!

Springfield Convent

Springfield Convent Girls School are Project 90s oldest club. They’ve been going for 3 years and have created a great example of a high achieving carbon slashing club! Led by Ruth Brain, Becky Hughes, Marilyn Lake and Kiera Dusterwald they worked on achieving most of their recommendations from their Green Audit Project last year in association with the City of Cape Town. This included creating geyser blankets, changing policies on lightbulb replacements, and installing water conserving shower heads.  They are still in the process of attaching a water meter to the borehole so they can calculate their usage for the following year.

The club is always busy and looking for new ways to cut carbon. At Springfield everyone knows about the Project 90 by 2030 club, from their frequent assemblies informing the rest of the school of their inspiring initiatives. Next year will be led by Ali and Emma, as the faithful four step down from their leadership role. We look forward to the Project 90 club flourishing in 2011! Well done.

South Peninsula High School

SP is a relatively new edition to the Project 90 Core Club Network. Like Springfield, they too were  part of the Green Audit Project in 2009. This year they have been brilliantly led by top students Tarryn De Kock and Brandon Van Niekirk, with huge support from Deputy Head, Zeid Baker. As part of their implementations they have created two indigenous gardens. One outside the reception area and the other on their school field. In edition to this great project, they created a food tunnel, which is maintained by grades 8s. The purpose of the tunnel shows how simple growing vegetables can be and will hopefully inspire other learners to start growing their own. The vegetables will be donated to disadvantaged communities.

The club has been very active in participating in the Project 90 events this year and are well organised, showing boundless passion and inspiration. We salute the club members at South Peninsula for all their hard work and effort this year. Well done!

St. Georges Grammar

St. Georges Grammar are one of our newest clubs. They officially started in July 2010 and have  achieved so much in such a short period of time. The club is 14 members strong and is masterly captained by learners Danisa Parks and Antaya March, supported by teacher Feroza Salie. As a club, they seeked to re-organise their recycling facilities at the school. To get the project off the ground, they gave a presentation to the headmaster to inform him of their plans. With the backing of the headmaster they organised a recycling drive. Each Friday, fellow learners were encouraged to bring in their recycling from home. The club then separated the waste and carried it to the bottom of the field where Oasis Recycling picked it up. The club has plans to incentivize the recycling program and extend it to the preparatory school. In addition to the recycling project, they discovered that hot water geysers were left on for long periods of time in the preparatory school classrooms. The classrooms were once used as accommodation. This has proved to be a gigantic electricity saving for the school, not to mention a huge carbon saving!! Well done St. Georges Grammar, we look forward to your valuable contribution in 2011 as a Project 90 Core Club!

Voices of the Youth

Last week, Project 90 Club members were taking part in an exciting workshop run by Lee Middleton, an American journalist based in Africa for the past five years, and Mbali Vilakazi, an award winning performance poet and radio host, from the Children’s Radio Foundation based in Cape Town. The club members were in the process of creating three podcasts which will be broadcast on SAFM in December on the issue of climate change, coinciding with the COP16 meeting in Cancun, Mexico. The aim of the project was to give youth the opportunity to speak up about their concerns on this very important topic.

 In addition to gaining more knowledge on the subject of climate change and it’s impacts, Nkosinathi and Thulisa from Rhodes High School and Brandon, Nadine and Kimico from South Peninsula High School learnt some valuable radio interview techniques; asking open questions, using the recording equipment correctly and speaking confidently into the mic and to the interviewee.

 Their task for the afternoon was to interview the public. Armed with the question ‘Do you think you are contributing to climate change and why?’ the club members set out to achieve their objective. It was interesting to see the different responses from the range of people they spoke to. One person admitted he’d never heard of climate change, another knew they were contributing to it but didn’t know how to lessen their impact.

 One of the most fascinating things we learnt that day was in Xhosa, there is no word for ‘Climate Change’. In order to communicate this clearly, one must describe exactly what it is. I certainly know in English it’s a very difficult concept to have to explain. Now that’s a challenge for the youth of today – to create a word for climate change in Xhosa and other local languages in South Africa. Who’s up for the task?