WESSA Schools Programme Annual Report 2019/2020

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Our food garden is invaluable to our school feeding scheme, since most of our learners come from poverty-stricken backgrounds.

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trees unnecessarily. People conserve water and community members recycle cans and bottles, etc. for money. Every household has a vegetable garden and the poverty cycle is breaking.

and boxes. We feed them fruit and vegetable peels, eggshells and teabags (but not onions or citrus). The worms make excellent compost very quickly. Our learners have learned to recycle, reduce and reuse . They even bring greywater from home, with which we water the flower garden. We fill empty bottles with sweet wrappers and other plastic to make eco-bricks, which become seats for our school grounds. Recyclable materials are sold to collect money for our school. Tins which contained fish are allowed to rust and we use them in compost. CHANGES AT SCHOOL AND IN OUR COMMUNITY Our learners care for the environment and no longer litter or cut d o w n

has a 20 litre water bucket and we no longer use running taps for drinking, which was wasting water. We no longer use basins to wash hands before meals but have tippy taps for washing hands. The grey water from handwashing is used for the flower garden. We estimate that we save thousands of litres a day! HOW HAS ECO-SCHOOLS AFFECTED ME? I have learned to improvise and save in new ways. Water is an irreplaceable source of life, which we must use wisely and also by making fertiliser from compost we have saved money. I have also learned: “… two ants are able to carry a locust” . Team work is necessary and makes us stronger.

ENVIRONMENTAL CHALLENGES AND SUCCESSES

Instead of burning trash we reuse, recycle or compost it. We use grey water for our garden and our JoJo tank harvests rainwater. We have also found that using watering cans (instead of hosepipes) further reduces water wastage. Learner attendance has improved because they are well fed and can concentrate better. Every class

MY WISHES FOR THE FUTURE I wish that all schools can have gardens, take care of the environment and use water wisely. We all need to learn about climate change and also how to adapt to climate change. These Eco-Schools practices can spread to all homes and break poverty cycles.

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