Zonnebloem school receives water relief
ZONNEBLOEM College Estate has received much-needed water relief thanks to the donation of six Jojo tanks.
The donation of 5 000-litre tanks yesterday formed part of Sunlight2in1’s Water Smart Campaign.
Sunlight2in1 made a donation of 35 Sunlight2in1 yellow JoJo water storage tanks to the active Save Our Schools (SOS) NPO to improve water saving and sanitation for schools in central Cape Town.
This as the City yesterday announced that even though dam levels had risen, water consumption had also increased. Residents were urged to adhere to restrictions.
Collective consumption over the past week was 532 million litres of water a day while dam levels have shown a further increase of 2% to 31.8%.
SOS is providing schools in need with alternate water sources during the Cape’s worst drought in over 30 years, according to the organisation’s executive director, Shelley Humphreys.
“Washing hands can reduce infections by 50% as well as being a key intervention for the prevention of many other killers such as cholera, Ebola and respiratory infections.
“Access to water and hand soap are essential. Hand washing can save over 600 000 children’s lives every year,” Humphreys said.
Reverend Rachel Mash, who heads the Anglican Church’s environmental network, and Zonnebloem Boys’ principal Deon May thanked the sponsors.
Assistant brand manager at Unilever Lerato Dumisa said: “Communities have been welcoming this campaign, which to a large extent has been affording them the freedom to utilise nature to overcome the challenges of water shortages.”
Sunlight2in1 encourages people to make use of greywater in other household tasks such as flushing toilets.
The principal of the Community Arts Centre at Zonnebloem, Deon May, said: “If we don’t have water it hampers our operations at the Children’s Arts Centre, which means that learners are negatively affected.
“It makes sense for us to have an alternate water source, because when we are faced with water outages – and don’t have water for our ablutions, flushing toilets and washing hands – it is a rule that schools have to dismiss learners until water is restored due to the sanitation risk. This obviously means that learners are missing out on essential schooling time.”