GAUTENG
(TSHWANE NORTH D3)
MASHABA B.M.
KOKOTLA JUNIOR SEC SCHOOL
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BIODIVERSITY, SUSTAINABLE
AGRICULTURE AND WASTE
MANAGEMENT
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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.
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CONT…
• This issue caused many of our learners to
under perform at school.
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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.
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Learners queue for
food
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.
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Some of ten learners
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.
9
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.
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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.
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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.
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Vegetables from our
garden
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.
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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.
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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.
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Mexican poppies
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.
19
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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THANK YOU!!!!!!
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