Making a change

Working closely with the Makana Municipality policies and issues of governance in regard to the environment has proved to be rather arduous. On the one hand, in light of the traditional ideas surrounding the media's attitude towards those in power, we want to play the all-important 'watchdog' role and rigorously investigate the municipality. This approach seems to be even more pertinent due to the fact that, according to a number of surveys carried out by our WEPD group, it does not appear as if any of Makana's environmental policies have been properly implemented. Even worse, almost no one we questioned had even heard of the municipality's Local Environmental Action Plan (LEAP). As journalists, we have a responsibility to find out why the municipality are not carrying out their duties as an institution responsible for the people of Grahamstown, particularly when issues surrounding the environment have become so critical.

This said, however, there are ways in which the media can facilitate change and work as a 'tool for development', something which our group believes is equally important. So while some of our WEPD media production will take an investigate approach, we also want to do something a bit different, something that can help the implementation of LEAP as well as make people aware of the environmental policies that are in place.

So after much brainstorming and many, many meetings we decided to work with the idea of creating a kind of educational pamphlet about LEAP. Obviously we would hope to reach as many people as possible with this pamphlet so it would need to be produced in a way that would speak to both students and local residents living in all areas of Grahamstown - it may be necessary, then, to have pamphlets printed in English and Xhosa. This pamphlet would tell people what they need to know about LEAP; what some of the policies are, how they operate, how they can get involved, who to contact for more information.

One of the biggest problems surrounding the production of media about government policies is that it is fairly easy to fall into the trap of making it boring and simply regurgitating the same kind of jargon and complicated language used in the policies and official statements. Our challenge would be to make these ideas accessible to the proverbial 'man on the street'. Making the pamphlet as visually stimulating as possible, using cartoons, pictures and interesting layout designs, would certainly help here but also careful attention would need to be paid to the language used.

What we are hoping is that this pamphlet will provide a platform for engagement and debate with the environmental policies, particularly in light of the fact that it is an extremely relevant issue, as well as raise awareness about LEAP and what the Municipality can and should be doing. After all, it is about time that a change was made and perhaps we can give the people some empowerment to do that.