On June 16, Hlanzekile River and Ocean Cleaning held an activation event in collaboration with the Hector Pieterson Foundation at the Hector Pieterson Museum in Orlando West, Soweto.
When the organisation was founded, its aim was to focus on clean-up efforts but its vision quickly extended to a point where it became determined to educate fellow citizens about the far-reaching consequences of plastic pollution and how it disrupts the ecosystem.
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The Youth Day event was to mainly showcase what Hlanzekile is trying to do and has done thus far in terms of cleaning the rivers specifically their recent clean-up campaign that took place at Braamfonteinspruit River.
The family of the late Hector Pieterson was part of the day alongside President of ActionSA, Herman Mashaba and many residents of Soweto.
Some of the community members signed up to volunteer for the next cleaning session where they will be cleaning the Klipriver next to Orlando West in September.
Ayanda Mandlopha who is a Hlanzekile team member spoke of how the community hasn’t fully understood the importance of their initiative as they haven’t started cleaning around Soweto.
“For now we were just raising awareness and to also alert the councillor about what we do so that he can also spread the word throughout the community.
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“We think once we have started to clean and people see what we are about then they will want to be involved.
“We know that we will be dealing with disadvantaged people so we want to include food parcels as a way of paying back to whoever will be helping us and we are also trying to engage other food-based organisations who want to be part of this,” said Mandlopha.
