Former mayor’s welfare initiative a huge success
Knysna Ward 5 councillor Eleanore Bouw-Spies is running a back-to-school campaign by collecting empty ice-cream containers, which will be filled with stationery and handed over to Rheenendal Primary School and surrounding areas.
Bouw-Spies first posted on Facebook at the beginning of the year asking locals to keep their containers for her to collect and promised to keep them updated.
Her follow-up post two days later was a sneak peek at the progress of the innovative project, with some even adorning the lids with encouraging messages. In the Facebook post she expresses her gratitude for the overwhelming support she has received. BouwSpies said the project is in line with her vision to reuse and recycle while at the same time contributing to the betterment of education of the learners in her ward. Explaining that she runs a back-to-school campaign every year, she said this year’s project was inspired by empty containers: “I was just looking at them this one time and wondered what I could do with them and then remembered that at my son’s school they used icecream containers to store their stationery.” She said that instead of the images of the ice-cream on the containers she pitched the idea to her team to come up with funny and encouraging messages both in Afrikaans and English. Bouw-Spies said the support from locals has been overwhelming and that she has even had people offering to buy some of the stationery. The goal is to collect at least 300 containers and so far they have managed to collect 192.