Westville school creates beautiful recycled rhino
Westville Girls' High School partook in a significant environmental initiative along with 40 other schools in the province.
FROM a weekly sandwich drive and egg collection to numerous national awareness and fundraising campaigns organised by various NGOs for different causes, Westville Girls’ High School (WGHS) supports various initiatives throughout the year.
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Given their strong commitment to such efforts, the school said it was an easy decision to support a project on rhino awareness as September marks Rhino Month in the environment sector and it coincides with World Rhino Day, which is commemorated every year on September 22. This they have done by making a beautiful rhino, which they have named Ingelosi.
Cayli Whyte-Sweet, the head of Art at WGHS, who led this initiative, organising the collection of materials, co-ordinating the girls who worked on the creation of the flowers and bringing Ingelosi to life, said the school, along with 40 other schools across the province, were approached by Project Rhino KZN to participate in this significant initiative.
“The project aims to create awareness about the majestic rhinoceros and the grave dangers it faces from poaching. The school received the rhino wire ‘skeleton’ from Project Rhino in about March. We had an activities day at the end of Term 2 where many girls popped into the art studio during the day to help cut bottles into flower shapes, cut tins into flowers and cut denim flowers.”
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The team involved also came to school on various Saturdays to work on the rhino.
Two past learners, Emily Sewchurran and Adithi Ramsarghey, also gave up a Saturday to come and assist.
Cayli passed on a special mention to her mother, Tanya Whyte-Sweet, who is a pensioner and dressmaker. “She painstakingly sewed the fabric onto the wire skeleton to provide a base for the flowers. I would also like to thank educator Prea Naick, the Art Department, Leani Louw, Peyton Coetser and Tersia Naidoo who gave up a lot of their time to assist. We completed the gorgeous Ingelosi at the end of August and had many months of piles of recycling in the art studio,” she said.
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“To complete Ingelosi, we used coffee pods, corks and cooldrink and beer cans, which a former parent who runs a pub collected for us. We had many plastic bottle caps, which Mrs Stone in the tuckshop collected for us; beer bottle lids which came from the German Club; old jeans which pupils brought to school; fabric donated by a parent; plastic milk bottles and plastic cooldrink bottles; Zulu love letters that were made by previous Grade Nine learners; and buttons and other bits and pieces that were in our art storeroom.”
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