For the writers this past week has been a nightmare in trying to get stories together. We organized for two of our stories to be published in the Environmental section of the Oppi Press. Therefore the deadline was on Wednesday and it has been a great stress to get them in by then. But we have succeeded. Both stories will be outlined in greater detail by the other writers, but I will just give you an idea as to what they entail. Our first story is about the Department of Electricity and their energy efficient light bulb project. This project was initiated in September and aims to offer the people of Grahamstown free energy saving lamps. This is not only good for the pockets of local residents but also for the environment. We visited students at their digs where the municipality had recently visited and installed these light bulbs. We also had an extensive interview with the technical assistant at the Department of Electricity, who told us that the project has been a great success. Our other story follows the Albany water project. We learnt that if this project is to be accepted by the municipality then water in Grahamstown could increase by 55%. We did vox pops and side bars for this story, in order to find out how this increase would affect students.
As a writer getting to the bottom of a story is essential. But this project has made me realise how hard it can be to speak to people who do not want to be spoken to. It has taken a great deal of hard work and many relationships have been formed in order to get the interviews that we did. I feel that the municipality constantly has people and journalists criticizing them, and therefore they are afraid to make comments. With much hard work we were able to get the information we needed and in the process we have learnt to understand both sides to the story.
Another project in the pipe line is our educational LEAP poster. This poster will inform the member of Grahamstown of their constitutional right to a clean environment. We have been collecting information from many municipality sources on information surrounding the promises made by LEAP. On the poster, we have highlighted the essential things people need to know about their environment in particular water, waste and electricity. We have also put contact numbers that people in distress can use to seek help, as well as check lists for saving electricity and telling people where to dump their waste legally.
Besides from the writing side there is still the exciting venture of the design student’s banner. This banner will allow the public to write their concerns about Grahamtowns environment and voice their opinion on what the municipality is doing. This will be going up tomorrow at Checkers and Pick ‘n Pay from 1-2pm, and later at 5-6pm. We have organized for the event to be covered by our television students in the form of a documentary of all we have done. At this event we will also be handing out flyers, which were provided to us by the Department of Electricity. We have agreed to hand out these “save energy” flyers as they correlate with our aims and our campaign to inform and facilitate change within Grahamstown. The event should be exciting as all members will be present sporting our campaigns colours of green, orange and black. We hope to create some hype around these environmental concerns and get people talking.
Our last project which involves all members of the group is our Exhibition. This is taking place next Monday in Ext 6 of Joza Township. At this event we will finally be able to show the public what we have done and raise awareness as to what the municipality is doing and whether the policies are being implemented. The design students have created flyers for the event which we will also hand out at the banner signing tomorrow. We hope to create awareness as well as give people the chance to speak out about their problems.
Overall our project is going very well. “Take a Leap” has been an exciting and stressful adventure. But it is not over yet, in our last week we still have a large part of the public to inform, and a great deal of change to make.
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