Staging a victory

Inspirational: Learners of Madile primary school presenting at the WED and WDCD in Bushbuckridge on Friday.

By Ramushu Msiro Serious

It

has been a great day for the people of Bushbuckridge, Mpumalanga with the presence of environmental affairs minister Mrs Edna Molewa within their territory. The gathering was a two in one celebration as was a combination of both the World Environment Day and World Day to Combat Desertification and subsequently a hand over of tourism infrastructure at Andover Game Reserve. In addition to that, there was a school awareness competition taking place as well. The event took place in Cottondale, Arconhoek under Bushbuckridge municipality. A lot was learnt about WED and WDCD. There was an awareness competition taking place too by different schools, but however the crowd was cheered by the exceptional performance of pupils from Madile primary school. The school was part of the 10 selected schools which took part in the school awareness campaign. The campaign is aimed at educating the young creatures about environmental issues. Led by Ms Morwesi Ramotse, the school awareness campaign has a unique way of showing and bringing out talent and knowledge from the kids in primary school. It also aim to encourage children participation in events to have their inputs to problems facing the country but from an environmental perspective. Learners are usually given a topic on which to prepare a presentation on. On Saturday a group of precociously gifted and talented young kids of Madile primary won the competition. They gave a very impressive-educating presentation which resulted with them really deserved it. When asked of their secret behind their victory, the group leader seated, emitted a smile unsure where to begin. He giggles and grins with delight for almost a minute, seemingly happy for the victory and later sighed and said “sufficient preparation is the key behind everything” and continued that one needs also motivation from peers and educators as well as to have confidence. We only had five days to prepare and here we are as champions…he said (smiling). The competition saw these learners walking away with a R15 000.00 voucher to purchase environmental related materials. The topic was “Impacts of Desertification, Land Degradation and Drought on our livelihood and impact of illegal wildlife trade on our economy”