Locals help clean up the city
PHILANTHROPIST Marlene Neumann was grateful when the Buckaroo Project received a donation of R5 000 from the Rotary Club of Gately last month, raised at the Wine Auction at the Premier Hotel in East London.
The Buckaroo project funds a pet sterilisation drive which, to date, has seen more than 200 dogs spayed and neutered.
For the past five months, the project has been working in the Chintsa East township.
The Daily Dispatch reported (“Rotary Club donates 20k” June 20) that Rotary’s aim was to support organisations that make a difference in the community.
“I am excited and grateful that the animals are finally being recognised as part of Rotary in East London.
“Animals are sentient beings and should be treated with the same care as humans,” Neumann said. For the past year every Monday, Neumann and her Buckaroo volunteers, along with the East London SPCA, go into townships and sterilise dogs.
She said it was always a challenge to find money to do this.
“The money we have received from Gately was used towards sterilising female township dogs and to buy some kennels for winter.
“We are in desperate need of dog pellets as the dogs must be fed before sterilisation to fatten them up for the operation,” she said.
Neumann and her Buckaroo team are raising funds for a sterilisation drive in informal settlements in and around East London.
“I believe that if we can slow the birth rate down, the local shelters will feel the relief in years to come.”
She said they urgently required blankets, kennels, food and collars.
Donations can be dropped off at her centre at 83 Kent Road, Vincent. TO KEEP the homeless warm this winter Lumka Mdeliso of Amalinda donates blankets to make a difference in the East London community.
Mdeliso, who works as a fashion, beauty and home manager at Woolworths, said she started the initiative in April after seeing many people sleeping on the streets without any blankets.
“There are street-dwellers that the Downtown Christian Centre hosts at a soup kitchen and, since it is winter, I really felt for them sleeping on floors without blankets,” she said.
Mdeliso approached her friends and asked them to donate blankets and was surprised by the support she received.
“We collected blankets that EAST London-based organisation The Local Yokel Project held a fundraiser at Beacon Bay Country Club on Friday in order to raise money for their new clean-up programme, Masiyenze.
The proceeds will go towards buying new equipment for the clean-up crews.
Local Yokel was founded by Meg Devan in 2014 and was initially focused on encouraging East Londoners to support local businesses.
“We’ve got an online directory where people can see which the local businesses are in East London,” Devan said. we could donate towards these street-dwellers to make the winter season a little more bearable for them.
“The mandate is that 51% of the ownership must reside in our area.
“Part of getting Local Yokel going is getting the pride back in our city,” she said.
To continue in this vein, Local Yokel began organising street clean-ups around the city, which began in January this year. They named their new project “Masiyenze” (Let's Do It) and, to date, have managed to collect about 20 tons of refuse.
The project focuses mostly on clearing gutters, removing weeds, and general tidying up of the city’s streets. While they did do litter pick-ups when needed, this was not a big part of the project, Devan
“The support I had was amazing. Some brought clothes and some even bought new blankets to support the initiative,” Mdeliso said.
She said she took the blankets to the Christian Centre where they were handed out to the homeless.
“This is only the beginning. What I had discovered in this journey is that there is more to be done for the needy and there is more that I can do to help others.
“Our community needs us. “There is more to be done to make a difference and I see this initiative growing and if we get as many sponsors as possible that can help, everyone who needs a hand can be reached,” she said. said. “There actually isn’t as much litter as we think,” she said.
According to Chris Turner, one of the co-founders of the Masiyenze project, they aim to “take the ‘slum’ out of ‘Slummies’.”
“The way it started was to try and reclaim East London one street at a time,” he said.
“It's nice at the end of each week when I can see there is a difference,” Turner said.
Anyone looking to help The Local Yokel Project or find out more about the organisation, can visit their website, http://www.localyokel.co.za/ or their Facebook page.