SCHOOL AND COMMUNITY PROJECTS MAKE A REAL LIFE DIFFERENCE
BY SAVING MONEY THROUGH SAVING ELECTRICITY
The Eskom schools and community projects are a key cornerstone in reaching the residential and community users of electricity. The schools projects create awareness amongst learners and educators alike while imparting knowledge and an energy efficiency conscious way of life from and early age. The aim on community level is also to endorse projects that make a real difference to the lives of South Africans through enabling significant electricity cost savings.
A full learner's course on energy efficiency has been developed for use in schools. This course is available from Eskom DSM with comprehensive teacher and learner material in order to bring home the message of the importance of saving electricity as a way of life. The material is fun to use and highly informative. Learners get the opportunity to do electricity audits of their school and to assist in ensuring that the energy saving methods are practically applied in their daily environment.
But the course and learners material is not only of academic value. Two very different but equally significantly beneficial projects will be showcased as part of the celebration of energy efficiency during Energy Efficiency Month 2004 in May this year.
During Energy Efficiency Month 2004 the retrofitting of Abalindi is a major milestone event where media and other stakeholders will have the opportunity to view the project and its impact for themselves.
Abalindi Welfare Society in Umzinyathi, Inanda is a non-profit organisation, which was established in 1998. The Society has a Board of Directors who governs over a variety of projects, of a social welfare and income generating nature, including the Abalindi Old Age, Children's Home, Thokozani Crèche, block making project, community bakery as well as vegetable gardening and poultry farming.
Last year 2002 Abalindi Social Welfare approached Eskom Development Foundation for funding their Bakery Project. Their Bakery Project has 12 members, which consist of eight women, two youths, and two disabled. Eskom Foundation approved their request for the funding of their bakery project which needed bakery equipment which is capable of higher scale production of breads in their bakery because they were not meeting their customer demand, and this bakery project supply bread to all their projects listed above as well as their local community (which includes their local supermarkets and spazas) and schools. The income received from the bakery project is mostly used to sustain their welfare projects which are not generating an income.
Before Eskom's assistance the bakery project was not meeting the demand for bread by their projects, as well as the demand the demand of the community living in their area. This highlighted the need to upgrade their bakery equipment to produce in a larger scale, to meet their demand for bread in their centre, as well as their community. They needed this income from the bakery in order to run their centre because it is one of their most important income generating projects. They had to raise the funds to do this upgrade and Abalindi Bakery Project approached the Eskom Foundation to source funds to upgrade their bakery. The request was granted and the Eskom Foundation funded the bakery upgrade with more than R200 000.
The bakery now produces six times the amount of bread as before and is able to meet the demand for bread in their area of supply. The increased bakery production capability has created jobs creation in the area and has reduced poverty. The Centre receives a higher income than before from this bakery and this money is helping most of their Welfare Activities which are not generating sustainable income.
The bakery project mainly helps the centre by providing all of the Abalindi projects in the centre bread for their feeding scheme and sells all surplus produced bread to the schools, supermarkets and spazas. The generated income is used to meet the running costs of the bakery as well as supporting some of the Abalindi welfare projects.
Eskom Development Foundation Chief Executive Officer, Ms Mabel Makibelo identified another area of support in the Abalindi Welfare Society in addition to the new bakery equipment, which was to donate 100 blankets to supplement their bedding during last year's winter season. Eskom Development Foundation is now in the process of Renovating Old Age Home in the Abalindi Welfare Society which will cost Eskom Foundation a further R114 000.
As part of the overall contribution, Eskom Demand Side Management undertook an electricity audit at the institute and will be making it an electricity efficient building. Eskom are installing energy efficient lamps, cover geysers with geyser blankets, fit on lowflow showerheads and install door swipes on the doors. This will help the project to be more sustainable as they will be using less electricity. Fans will be installed in the pre-school building as it gets very hot in summer.
The second main schools programme as part of the Energy Efficiency Month 2004 is the Sunnyridge Primary School project. The school was selected for 2004 for and electricity audit and an electricity efficient retrofit, due to their being very energy efficiency conscious and reaching their goals and environmental targets. The school has also adopted an Electricity Efficiency awareness programme to bring home the electricity efficiency message to the learners.
When Eskom DSM launched the "COUNTING THE COST OF ENERGY" in 2002 Sunnyridge were key partners in the project and provided valuable input on development of project material. In 2003 they extended their partnership role by introducing energy efficiency into the learning of the Sunnyridge grade sevens learners of that year.
The school also entered the "Bontle ke Botho" (BKB) competition run by the Gauteng Department of Agriculture, Conservation, Environment and Land Affairs (DACEL) and won the 1st prize for the Human Settlement - Energy Category in 2003.
Sunnyridge Primary School hosts an annual event at the school "THE SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY WEEK", where they invite various institutes and organisations to exhibit. An Eskom DSM exhibit proved to reach far wider than just the grade seven learners and was seen as a key success in community electricity efficiency awareness.
Contact Detail:
For more information phone:
Latetia Venter
Eskom DSM Marketing & Communication Manager
Cell: 082 468 7667
Call our DSM hotline on 0860-728 928
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