Community and Heritage - Eco Winners

Three Grade 10 pupils Tyrone Pillay; Emily Garland and Amahle Naywose, entered the South Africa Institute of International Affairs Environmental Competition.  This took the form of an academic paper which was submitted to the Institute for prior judging.  The topic they researched was Urban food gardens as a solution to Sustainability.  The pupils pursued academic research on the topic of Sustainability and the Sustainable Development Goals being launched at the COP 21 summit in Paris in December, and on Urbanisation including the issues of long distances food is transported into cities, food insecurity amongst the urban poor, and environmental issues such as lack of water seepage and soil degeneration.  The solution the pupils suggested was more community food gardens.  They visited the Kenneth Gardens feeding scheme and analysed the reasons for the failure of the their food garden and compared this with the success of a food garden project in the city of Seattle, Oregon USA. 

From the prior judging 5 schools were selected to present their papers at the Botanic Gardens Lecture complex on Monday 14^thSeptember.  The team won the KZN provincial event and have been invited to Johannesburg to participate in the Future Young Leaders Conference to be held at the University of the Witwatersrand in early December.