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Learn about the successful greening project at Mashaba B.M. Kokotla Junior Secondary School in Tshwane, Gauteng. Discover how the project has improved learners' performance, engaged pensioners, and addressed challenges such as limited space and water supply. Explore the importance of eradicating invasive alien plants and integrating this topic into the curriculum.
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GAUTENG (TSHWANE NORTH D3) MASHABA B.M. KOKOTLA JUNIOR SEC SCHOOL
BIODIVERSITY, SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE AND WASTE MANAGEMENT
BACKGROUND • We started the greening project in 2009 in March. • The main aim was to try and do something for the learners who sleep in classrooms during the lessons early in the morning. • When they were asked if they had something to eat, they indicated that most of them have not eaten anything. • Not that they did not want but they did not have anything to eat at home.
CONT… • This issue caused many of our learners to under perform at school.
ACTIONS • We therefore decided to do something to try and alleviate the problem, apart from sharing our own food of which it was only a temporal solution we decided to introduce a food garden behind the school to augment what we as educators contributed.
CONT… • We formed the greening project consisting of ten school learners, members of the governing body and educators. • We wrote some proposal to different companies and individuals for advices on how best to run the project. • The people who came to our rescue were the department of agriculture who gave us six different seed to start our project.
ACHIEVEMENTS • To date we can proudly say that the project has been a resounding success because we are able to provide something for the learners to eat and now the performance has improved. • The project now includes pensioners from the area. • They have asked the school to come and help since they have nothing else to do at home.
CONT… • These pensioners are doing a wonderful job because they grow own vegetables and at the same time help to water our own when we are busy in the classrooms and they donate some of the vegetable to the school.
CHALLENGES • Some of the challenges that we encounter in our project are space that is too small to accommodate more vegetables, the other challenge is that we cannot accommodate more people form outside for security reasons. • We have another challenge of water supply at school that is not sufficient to cater for the number of gardens that we want to make on small patch of land. • There is also the problem of vandalism because our school does not have proper fencing and security personnel.
ADVANTAGES • The pensioners are grateful because they can take some fresh vegetable home on a weekly basis. • We help feeding scheme at school and the parents take fresh vegetables home. • The advantage is harvesting vegetable in the school garden. • We use kitchen waste to make compost that also helps in fertilizing our crops and also mulch our garden using leaves from trees in our school.
INVASIVE ALIEN PLANTS • Our country South African is a water scares country and we depend on rain for our water supply. • The underground water also plays a major role. • The invasive alien vegetation consumes most of our underground water. • These alien plant contribute to our country‘s dryness. • We must educate the community through school learners to eradicate all alien vegetation in our country.
CONT… • Plants like wattle in Gauteng cause field fires that can assist us to such to save our water. • The community should be aware. • The notice them growing in their gardens and surrounding areas and destroy them immediately before they can spread. • Our river and streams are also being attacked by the alien plants such as water hyacinth uses a lot of water that is supposed to be used by people around the area and the rivers become dry.
ACTION TAKEN • Once such plant is detected early it becomes easy to eradicate them and destroy them before they cause serious damage. • In Soshanguve Gauteng North we have Invasive plants called Datura Ferrox or Thorny Apple that grows in our gardens and every time the learners see it they remove it soon as possible. • We also have Mexican poppy that troubles us and we do try to eradicate them permanently. • We have another tree with yellow flowers called yellow bells.
INTERGRATING IAP’s TO LEARNING AREAS • The schools should integrate the topic of alien vegetation in the nine learning areas in all the grades, learners will be able to have a good foundation on how to eradicate these plants from their homes school and their immediate environment. • We must also talk to the parents during the meeting to educate them about these plants and how best to do away with them.
CONT… • Our rivers and streams need to be monitored more often to remove aquatic Alien plants invading them and as a result reducing the scares water that we struggle so much to accumulate and our water are covered by the IAP’s and that lead to animals and Human been struggling to survive on such circumstances. • The fight for survival in the twenty first century is about how to save our scarce commodity in our country which is water.
Cont… • We have to come up with new way of harvesting water and learn how to be water wise. • We have to device means and ways of making sure that our river streams and dams are able to carry clean water and be able to cater for the entire country and not resort to buying from our neighbors.
CONT… • Let us try and advice our learners and friends to save water and not use toilets as rubbish bins and not to contaminate our water by throwing liter and used oil, chemical aerosol sprays, expired medicines, pills and other dangerous substances inside the water. • These items cause poison into the water and they also kill some of our marine animals living in those water.
How can we involve other people to help fight these? • We can start talking about it in our transport to work, in the staffrooms, and involve the local radio stations, using all sorts of topics in debating societies, forming the environment organizations, using pensioners to help keep them busy and involving the department of water affairs (Working for Water) for assistance as they are more willing to help at all times.
