Boland schools worked hard and won most of the top prizes in the yearly Our Schools Cares/Adopt-a-Spot competition, sponsored by Peninsula Beverages. Bloemhof Girls€™ High from Stellenbosch came first in the senior school section and received R8000 from the sponsors.
A state-of-the-art, eco-friendly library at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University€™s Missionvale Campus near Port Elizabeth will be completed soon, setting a new benchmark. Emphasis has been placed on the library€™s air-conditioning and lighting systems as they account for most of the energy consumption in the library.
A thousand students in green overalls, cheekily called the green police, raised awareness on campus during their recent Green Week. Known as the Green Campus Initiative, they are the biggest and fastest-growing society at UCT €“ started in 2007.This year they received R2000 in funding from the university, which seems incomprehensibly meagre.
The Earthchild Project in Cape Town was conceived while Janna was living in an eco-village in Brazil and reading the spiritual classic 'Autobiography of a Yogi€. 'The book describes the educational ideals of the ancient Indian rishis, namely that most instruction be given outdoors in nature, and that alongside academic subjects there be equal emphasis on teaching meditation and universal spiritual principles so as to develop the consciousness and not just the intellect of the child,€ Janna explained.
One outstanding example of a school dedicated to environmental awareness and action is the Imhoff Waldorf School in Kommetjie. It all began in 1997 when a small, passionate group of parents seeking education with an environmental emphasis for their children encountered the principles of Waldorf education.
Dis vir my altyd `n riem onder die hart om te sien hoeveel ons kinders omgee vir die natuurlike omgewing. Hulle besef hulle toekoms hang daarvan af. Talle skole krap deesdae kop oor hoe om te vergroen. Die Landsdiensklub van die Laerskool Paul Greyling in Vishoek het die leiding geneem en ´n Groen Forum gehou waarheen verskeie skole uitgenooi is om hulle bewarings-, herwinnings- en bewusmakingsprojekte te kom deel. Die skool wil sy gemeenskap help om omgewingsvraagstukke op te los, herwinning aan te moedig en volhoubare benutting van natuurlike hulpbronne te ondersoek.
In 2004 Sir Robert Swan lead a team to the Antarctic, supported by Coca-Cola, where over 1000 tons of waste was collected from the icy landscape. Five years later, Peninsula Beverages, the Bottler of the Coca-Cola products in the Western Cape, continues to actively support projects that help clean up our planet. PenBev have partnered with the Environmental Action Group and put their efforts behind the Our School Cares Programme, an environmental clean up programme where school children are motivated and rewarded for cleaning up their own schools and communities.
Over 200 school children from Khayalitshe collected nearly 100 bags of rubbish to transform stretches of Monwabisi Beach this weekend as part of the Our School Cares Programme. This is a Peninsula Beverages environmental initiative, in partnership with the Environmental Action Group. It is the third of eight beach and river clean ups for 2010.
Clean drinking water and sanitation facilities for thousands of schoolchildren and their immediate communities, is one of the legacies that The Coca-Cola Company, a primary sponsor of the 2010 FIFA World Cup„¢ - is bringing to South Africa.
This year€™s OUR SCHOOL CARES environmental competition started off with a good show of enthusiastic learners eager to clean the Strand beach on Earth Day. No less than 9 schools, 18 teachers and 310 learners, plus 60 dedicated Peninsula Beverages (the sponsors) staff and their children, pitched in and systematically stripped the beach of 400 bags of rubbish in one hour!
