More than a decade ago, a small team of people concerned about the environment decided to put in the elbow work to make their areas cleaner and safer to live in.
The group which started in a township outside Howick has now expanded to hundreds of people working across the uMgungundlovu and eThekwini Municipalities.
The initiative is giving people meaningful work, helping individuals realise and develop a love for nature while also ensuring a cleaner, healthier environment in Pietermaritzburg and surrounding areas in the process.
Run under the auspices of environment advocacy organisation Dusi-Umngeni Conservation Trust (DUCT), during its early stages the Enviro Champs initiative trained people to monitor basic service delivery challenges and how to report sewage leaks, water leaks and illegal dump sites within the townships to help municipal management manage those issues.
Enviro Champs are also trained in citizen science, testing their local streams to understand the current water quality.
As the Enviro Champs learn more skills, they diversify into new tasks and projects, including identifying and rehabilitating wetlands, identifying natural green spaces to restore, as well as turning dump sites into vegetable gardens enabling families to have access to healthy food.
DUCT lead marketing and communications officer Fundiswa Cele said water and sewage leaks had become common in many parts of KwaZulu-Natal and leaking sewers posed an environmental and health hazard, while water leaks wasted scarce treated water supplies.
Thanks to the Enviro Champs initiative, some of the challenges are being addressed in the neighbourhoods where they are active.
Cele said these simple services should be offered in every neighbourhood, saving municipalities millions of rands and making communities safer and more attractive.
Cele emphasised the organic approach followed.
“An Enviro Champ is a person who works for the common good in his or her own area. Such people are community-spirited and seek to care for and uplift their local communities. Enviro Champs are strongly committed to building community relationships and facilitating environmental education,” she said.
Recently the Enviro Champs partnered with traditional healers to address solid waste management through a two-day imbizo at which knowledge was shared and citizen science demonstrations broadened the potential scope of activities.
There were also ideas about how to combat solid waste challenges by combining traditional knowledge with modern scientific approaches, promoting a collaborative and community-driven solution.
The programme has several funders, with the primary source being the Social Employment Fund – an innovative Presidential Employment Stimulus programme that is changing lives across South Africa.
Cele said DUCT recruited unemployed people and offered them meaningful work and the chance to access a range of skills training opportunities.
DUCT is working with Unicef and Rhodes University to develop an innovative Green Learning to Earning skills programme that hopes to open up thousands of new income opportunities in the green economy – a part of the Just Transition in South Africa. Although many Enviro Champs are unemployed, they work by identifying environmental challenges and working with the authorities to address and overcome them.
According to Cele, Enviro Champs have made a difference in other areas such as identifying and rehabilitating wetlands.