A Celebration at Jan Marais Nature Reserve
For National Water Week in March, Cape Winelands Biosphere Reserve, in collaboration with Stellenbosch Municipality Urban Greening, held a Water Wise Festival at Jan Marais Nature Reserve from the 22nd - 24thMarch 2018.
There were children’s activities, talks, demonstrations, and stalls. Lanzerac Wine Estate provided volunteers to do face painting.
The invitation went out to the public, universities, and schools.
To open the festival the deputy minister of Stellenbosch Municipality shared his own practices, in his household and his family, how to save water. A wise highlight being 2-minute showers and reusing the water in the garden. He thanked his team in their effort to create water-use awareness.
Deputy Mayor of Stellenbosch opening the Water Wise Festival
The drummies from Ebenezer Primary School in Paarl put on a spectacular show to get the festivities started.
Throughout the festival the activities for the youth included
A demonstration by the High-Altitude Team from Working for Water on how they use their skills to rescue a cat out of a tree. USIKO brought a water tank for everyone to leave their hand-print on, later to be installed at creche - who they have donated it to, and CTEET did interactive games. They enjoyed a lesson on propagation methods of plants: how a small sustainable business can be created out of these horticultural practices from home. There were also two educational show and tell events by Giraffe House Road Show.
For the adults – there were talks by
Rob Armstrong ‘Role of Conservancies on Preserving the Catchment Area’
Louis Willemse ‘Water and Culture’
Dyllon Randall from UCT ‘Waterless Toilet Project – Creating fertiliser out of urin’
Good conversation and discussions evolved. Urine, culture, and blushing pride proteas became the 'aha moments' of the day.
Stalls educating about sustainability, energy and water saving
Solar Installation guys
Aquatron
EcoGator
Aqua Savers
Green Logic
Water Explorer
Cape Winelands Biosphere Reserve
EcoLatrine
Saw Dust Toilet
Cape Winelands District Municipality
Working for Water High Altitude Team
Working on Fire
A BIG THANK YOU to everyone who part-took in the festival!
It was a great success!
High Altitude Team at Jan Marais Park Water Wise Festival
Giraffe House made a special visit to the Water Wise Festival to teach children about reptiles and more!
A volunteer showing youth how aquaponics works