FATHER Christmas (Sosha Khumalo) dressed in green to promote eco-friendly living as lOver the Walls Together, a local non-profit organisation, hosted a Christmas parade at The Cube in Morningside recently.
Due to Covid-19 restrictions, organisers decided not to open the parade to the public. Instead, the guest list was limited to about 50 people and the parade was shared on social media.
Over the Walls Together co-founder, Jayshree Mallaya said the parade was international as 33 cities in the United States of America took part.
“Make Music Alliance is a non-profit organisation from the United States. It has 120 countries around the world as affiliates. This year, SA joined that list via our organisation. They held street parades in multipole US cities and they invited us to join in,” she said.
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She said the Over the Walls Together was founded four years ago when Winn Coleman, a Boston musician, contacted her.
“He reached out to me through a mutual friend. He wanted to work with our youth in our schools and communities. We held various campaigns aimed to empower youth. This year, we wanted launch our climate campaign with a green Christmas parade. We did not invite the public because of thee recent Omicron outbreak,” said Mallaya.
“The walls, in the name of our organisation, represent any social injustice. Together we can get through it,” she explained.
Mallaya and Coleeman wrote a song, Climate Action Heroes, as part of the campaign.
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“Our focus is to help youth understand climate action – that it is a natural part of your day, to become sustainable. We teach them to limit electricity use and avoid single-use plastic. We came up with the concept that Father Christmas goes green for Christmas. Father Christmas was dressed in green and we re-used used tires to make the float for the parade. We also made decorations from old milk cartons and cardboard tubes from toilet paper rolls. The message is that we be sustainable in today’s world,” said Mallaya.
Guest speakers as the event included Dr Erwin Sieben, Deveshnee Mariah and Deena Govender.
Rajiv Mothie and the Afro-fusion dancers provided entertainment along with the Red Light Chamber Choir, Bhuda hustler, Love World Productions, Teens Under The Hood and Black Tool Entertainment.
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