Township Students Getting Public to Pick up Rubbish

Paseka Menyau
@King_Matthews

They hope other township students will join their 'green' group.

A group of students from the Tshwane University of Technology have taken it upon themselves to clean the university’s two Soshanguve campuses and its residences. They’ve even stretched their campaign further and are now picking up rubbish around the township as well. They call their project the “Green Campus Campaign”.

Campaign coordinator, Tsediso Nthakhe, says “this campaign started small, but because of the hard work and dedication, we have managed to sustain the campaign and it’s still going strong.”

They are trying to grow their project and rely on word of mouth messages to assist in recruiting more students. They were even stopping students on the side of the road to ask them to join on the day I spent with them. “The main objective [is] to grow this campaign and make sure that every University has a structure or body that belongs to the Green Campaign,” explains Nthakhe.

He says students and residents of South African townships need to realise that it’s not only cleanliness that is necessary in their living spaces, but picking up rubbish and putting it in the bin has a greater scientific benefit as well. “We would like to see other students joining the campaign and the fight against global warming on our campus.”

Apart from picking up rubbish, the group also holds talks in TUT’s Soshanguve campuses and the university has even rewarded them with prize money of R1 000 at an inter campus cleanliness debate.

Their plan now is to just keep on recruiting and get more students involved. “We hope to educate more people about cleanliness with this campaign and hope we will get a positive response from the students and the Tshwane University of Technology as a whole,” says Nthakhe.