Cleaning up the Village.

On Friday 17 October the Masakhane community held a clean-up day. The event was organised and coordinated by development practitioners from Village Power, NGKWelsyn and members of the community commitee. Yvonne Kgope (pictured here), the commitee leader, organised the community members into teams.




Participants received some T-Shirts and over 30 black refuse bags were filled. These had to be removed by a development practitioner to be taken to the Magaliesburg refuse site.



The majority of adults who were in the settlement on the day participated although mothers with babies were cautioned to stay out of the very hot midday sun.









Small children tagged along with their mothers and also helped to get the settlement cleaned up.

The settlement has no refuse removal services. At a recent meeting this issue was raised. The Hekpoort municipality will be approached to give advice to the community and other stakeholders re. a possible refuse site or refuse removal services for the settlement.





The active participation of the youth in this project was very noticible. The young people were motivated and friendly, like this young girl, Johanna, who got into an unused empty cement reservoir and cleaned it of all the refuse that had collected there over time. This participation of the youth in community activities is an encouraging sign that the out of school youth in this settlement might not all be marginalised and the possibility of peer education exists as a measure to address marginilised youth within this community. The mobilisation of the youth of this community is an issue which is taken very seriously by Yvonne Kgope, the community leader.


The community was visited by Sue Clark, Corporate Affairs Director and Jenni Gillies, Group HIV Consultant SABMiller plc.

Refreshments were made available to all participants afterwards and a festive spirit with lots of singing and dancing prevailed despite the intense heat.

The clean-up day was very successful and proves that this community is actively working towards a better future for themselves.