I am alive! And yes, I am the worst blogger in the world. Well, to be honest, I have been so busy doing that I have no time for blogging. As to be expected, LEAP has been keeping me unbelievably busy. I just finished my first term here and also just finished leading a week-long workshop focused on recycling and reuse.
One of the things that LEAP tries to do is provide students with extended opportunities over the holidays to participate in positive, fun activities. So over the World Cup holiday I worked with some of my colleagues, both from school and our organisation SOWHO, to conduct a workshop that encouraged students to look for creative solutions to deal with waste. We invited about 10 artists from different sectors to come and work with the students. We had musicians, actors, jewellery makers, journalists, poets, garden experts, party planners and photographers leading different workshops- all focused on using recycled materials. Everyone had a great time and now the school has recycling fever! Below is a video from the workshop.
At the beginning of the video you will see pictures from the different groups. In the middle of the video you will see pictures of Alexandra, the township where our students live. All of the pictures of Alex were captured by our photojournalism students. They visited a particularly environmentally challenged informal settlement in Alexandra where trash has become so overwhelming that it is just piling up (not all of Alex has that much trash on the streets). Since it is an informal settlement it means that people have built shacks in places where there is no running water, electricity or garbage pick-up. The photojournalists then visited a FIFA-sponsored world-cup festival in Alex where a formal recycling program was being practiced for the two weeks that the festival was happening. Unfortunately after the festival was over FIFA took all the shiny new recycle bins with them...can't they help a community out?! I guess it gives our students a goal to work for- getting recycle bins in Alex permanently. We all learned a lot this week about what needs to be done and walked away feeling inspired to start to make a change. Enjoy the video...
