JOHN HARVEY
Sunny skies greeted more than a hundred student volunteers who descended on Little Mowbray on Sunday, May 22, for the inaugural Clean WORLD Movement Day, run in conjunction with 175 countries around the world.
The movement is divided into five parts – Clean Water, Clean Oxygen, Clean Region, Clean Life and Clean Descendants – and was backed by the international We Love U Foundation, a global charity organisation.
The campaign raises awareness about the environment and how to ensure clean water and oxygen for future generations. To date, the foundation has established 26 water pumps in water-stressed countries, including Ghana, Kenya and Cambodia.
For the Little Mowbray clean-up campaign, the foundation’s Cape Town volunteers teamed up with the City’s solid waste management department to focus on the Liesbeek Parkway, Durban Road, the Mowbray Maternity Hospital and the Mowbray taxi rank.
“A few weeks ago, we partnered with the volunteers to clean up sections of Lansdowne, which proved to be a very successful event,” said solid waste management supervisor Mogamat Titus.
“These volunteer groups make a huge difference in terms of our efforts to clean up the city. There are massive areas to cover, and each supervisor might only have 12 team members under him.
“Getting to every area therefore becomes difficult, particulaly as clean-ups have to be done in cycles. So efforts such as these are most welcome.”
Although Mr Titus said the Little Mowbray area was far cleaner than Lansdowne, there was still a great need to remove weeds from the pavement and remove rubbish from the taxi rank and hospital.
The volunteers were divided into six groups and took to their task with enthusiam.
Within minutes, the taxi rank seemed to take on a new lease on life as students from UCT, CPUT, Stellenbosch University and Varsity College used shovels and spades to tackle stubborn weeds which were tossed into refuse bags provided.
Kusile Kewana, of the We Love U Foundation, said she was thrilled so many students had volunteered for the clean-up.
“Climate change is obviously a big concern for all of us, and so initiatives such as these are very important for us.
“We have done a few clean-ups in the Cape Town area already, but this is the first time that we have managed to stage such a coordinated effort under the banner of the Clean WORLD Movement,” she said.
