187 – 138 NPO

ecoculturesa@gmail.com Sergio: 083 411 0809 Alex: 082 775 4115

April 2017

Organisation Quarterly Report

Eco Culture was formed in early 2017 by two former members of Green Beings NPO, Alex Frost and Sergio

Goncalves, and a new addition, Amelia Ratlhankana (Picture Right). She is a passionate environmentalist

with really good experience. Having studied environmental sciences and

environmental education, with almost five years’ work experience in the sector, she brings some real value to the organisation and projects.

We have continued with the former Green Beings projects and still provide

direct support to our seven beneficiary schools in Cosmo City, as well as a few other subsidiary schools around Johannesburg.

After more than six years running the previous NPO we decided to rather

run the new organisation as a Social Enterprise. We will keep the previous

projects going but will also focus on job creation initiatives within the

Green economy. This will make us more sustainable by generating our own income to fund the many projects that we have on the go.

We have not been idle over the last few months, along with setting up the

new organisation we have still made the time to expand and grow our

footprint. The schools and community are reacting well to our initiatives and reaching new heights with their environmental and sustainability practices.

122 Market Street Johannesburg North

Randburg 2188

Pictures Above: Alex and Sergio receive an award from

JHB City Parks for our ongoing river rehabilitation programme.

City of Johannesburg – Eco Guides Project

The City of Johannesburg has long been supporting our projects in Cosmo City and elsewhere. In January

2017 they provided us the means to hire a few people from Cosmo City as interns that could support the

organisation and learn valuable skills. We were lucky to find two motivated and passionate guys, Tsepho,

who lives over the road from one of our beneficiary schools, and Mutshidzi who is currently studying

environmental sciences. They are proving to be invaluable to our organisation and we really hope to keep them on board after the six month contract from the City comes to an end.

WESSA Eco Schools Awards Ceremony

Picture above left: Our intern Eco Guides Mutshidzi and Tshepo, being trained by Alex to conduct workshops on biodiversity and aquatic ecosystems.

Picture above right: Mushidzi and Tshepo at a Cosmo City school after conducting a workshop. The City of Joburg provides them with a stipend to work for our organisation.

Picture Above: The teacher co-ordinator from Tirisano Mmogo Primary in Cosmo City presents their recently

awarded National Green Flag.

This year two of our beneficiary schools in Cosmo City received their international Green Flag. This

prestigious environmental excellence award can only be received after continuously displaying five years of

environmental teaching, learning and sustainability. We are so proud of all our schools and their ongoing commitment.

Green Schools Project – Cosmo City West Primary

2017 Cosmo City Eco-Schools Results

• Cosmo Junior Primary: International Green Flag

• Cosmo Secondary School: International Green Flag

• Cosmo Primary School: Gold Certificate

• Cosmo West Primary: Gold Certificate

• Tirisano Mmogo Primary: National Green Flag • Blue Eagle High School: National Green Flag

Picture above left: Teachers using the organic and biodynamic vegetable garden to demonstrate both how plants grow and

ecosystems, for hands on learning.

Picture above right: The vegetable garden was then mulched, which will prevent weed growth, retain soil moisture and a

host of other beneficial reasons.

Picture above left: Sergio and the deputy principal marvelling over the harvest from the garden.

Picture above right and below: Fixing a leak in the rain

water catchment system. We have a capacity of 10 000L

which we were able to fill over the course of a rainy week.

Pictures left: The

Spinach growing

vegetable boxes placed

outside of each

classroom is doing

really well. The learners

are responsible for

caring for the

vegetables.

Top Pictures: Tsepho and Mushidzi in the car with all the recently chopped down alien invasive

reeds. (We really need to get a bakkie!)

Bottom Pictures: We used the reeds to build trellises in the large school vegetable garden.

These trellises provide a supporting platform for the beans and tomatoes to grow on.

Pictures Above: Our prototype biogas digesters needed maintenance and slight alterations to the casing

of the bottom shell. The Eco Culture team and the guys from EZ Gas worked hard over the course of a

day to replace the necessary equipment. These digesters provide cooking gas to the schools kitchen.

Upcycling Old Pallets into Veggie Boxes

Pictures Above: We teamed up with Better SA to help conduct a CSI day for VW at a special

needs school just outside of Alexandra Township. Our part in the project was to build

vegetable boxes and plant the range of vegetables. The learners will help with the

maintenance, and the harvest will go towards the feeding scheme.

Water Week Awareness Campaign in Cosmo City

National Water Week took place from the 20th to the 25th of March. We took this opportunity to design a

school based campaign that would highlight water saving as well as the importance of wetland habitats. Our

campaign reached over 3000 children from Cosmo City. We involved all the primary schools, namely Cosmo

West Primary School, Tirisano Mmogo Primary School, Cosmo City Primary School 1 and Cosmo City Junior Primary School.

Rand Water sponsored an educational play and 240 water wise

and educational posters for all the primary schools. A generous

and caring local company, Clyde and Bergmann Africa, sponsored

water testing kits and much of the operational expenses of the

Water Week campaign.

Pictures Left: A nervous Tshepo and

Mutshidzi speaking at the school

assembly (which amounts to about

1600 children). They introduced the

campaign, talking to the learners on

ways to be water wise and why we

need to be so careful with this resource.

Picture top right: The 240

educational posters sponsored by

Rand Water. Each Cosmo School received 30 posters.

Pictures top and

bottom: The Rand

Water

educational team

presenting for the

first time. We

organised for

them to perform

at four schools

over the course of the campaign.

Picture above: The children respond really well to song and dance, and Manzi the water wise “tap duck” is always a hit!

Water Testing with the Grade 6’s

Pictures Left: Before the workshop

began we had a visit from Clyde and

Bergmann’s CEO who gave the kids a

short talk on the importance of water in our lives.

Picture below: Alex briefing the class

on the water testing workshop that

would soon follow. The learners were

amazed to hear that the water from

that stream would eventually flow to

the Indian Ocean and the pollutants

from Cosmo City would influence the Sea fish they eat.

Through the sponsorship from Clyde and Bergmann Africa we were able to take almost 450 grade 6

learners, one class at a time over three days, down to the near-by Sand River to learn about the

wetland ecosystem and some of the aquatic animals that live there.

Pictures above: We conducted the MINNI SASS water test with the learners to determine the health of the

stream. This water test uses the presence or absence of a range of aquatic invertebrates to determine the

health of the system. Interesting creatures that were observed included crabs, frogs, a fair amount of bugs

and even a juvenile water monitor (picture centre right).

Pictures above: The foam and the discolouration is a sign that the water is polluted. We ensured that all the learners were very careful not to touch the water directly.