What is it? 

Rejuvenating Rivers is a project funded by the United Thank Offering that seeks to clean up rivers in Makhanda, South Africa and surrounding areas. We want to train, educate and support a group of high school learners to become environmental change makers in their community by monitoring, adopting and identifying environmental hotspots along rivers threatened by pollution and droughts. The project will generate media content and make use of indigenous knowledge through intergenerational transmission. It also seeks to raise awareness of environmental issues through a real-world practical interaction. This project is held on Saturday mornings involving Inkululeko learners and Awarenet learners. 

Why is it relevant? 

Mahkanda, South Africa is one of many socio-economically marginalized communities across South Africa. South Africa is, according to the World Bank, the World’s most unequal nation. 

Who is involved? 

The project is funded by United Thank Offering, and is a collaboration between Awarenet and Inkululeko. 

What are our goals?

The first goal is to reduce pollution of the local rivers; this will be measured by before and after assessments by professionals from the local university. 

The second goal is to conscientise the youth participating in the project and the community living around the rivers about environmental challenges; this will be measured through questionnaires. 

The third goal is to create media content about the environmental challenges connected to the rivers; this will be measured by the number of articles, videos and blog posts distributed. Our biggest success is seeing learners showing interest and being concerned about environmental issues. 

Our project is focused on environmental advocacy as well as for the greater Makhanda community. Through our work, learners and community members will not only clean rivers, they will also create compelling media content to amplify this message of being environmentally aware and protecting the communities’ scarce water resources. 

This project has played the biggest role in the lives of our learners and by getting them into the streams to feel the mud, the smell and touching the dirt made them also realize the importance of recycling, not throwing rubbish in our local streams.