Locals embark on clean up in their area
For sanitary reasons, the youth urged the community to maintain their environment clean.
Residents have united to clean up parts of their neighbourhood.
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The clean-up campaigns were organised and conducted by community volunteers who form part of the Malatsi Foundation (NPC).
The Malatsi Foundation is situated in Thembisa at 703 Mashimong Luner Street.
According to one of the founders, Thabiso Malatsi, the organisation takes on tasks ranging from sweeping streets and sidewalks to picking up and separating trash and recyclables to trimming bushes in a park to hauling bulky waste onto a pickup truck and taking it to the dump.
The organisation also paints over graffiti, cleans drains, hauls away fallen tree branches and reports abandoned vehicles.
“We enlisted the help of volunteers and people bring their own equipment, such as garbage bags and pickup trucks and their own cars.
Residents and businesses can be proud of a neighbourhood that is well-kept, free of trash and clutter and that allows children to play without getting hurt by debris or contracting parasites or diseases from rotting waste.
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These volunteers can be proud of themselves if they have helped to shape the neighbourhood in this way.
Additionally, a clean-up inspires locals to take charge of their community.
“Community members may realise they can take care of other concerns in the neighbourhood and in their own lives after seeing how much can be done, even in a half day, with many hands and a low service level from government.
Participation in such an endeavour may cause children and young people in particular to alter their perceptions of what is achievable.
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“People get to know one another and develop ties through their experience working on a similar goal.
“These connections make up the web of social capital that holds a community together. That web can contribute to lasting, significant change.
“Residents are more inclined to offer mutual aid and support, work to minimise neighbourhood crime and violence and tolerate one another’s differences when people know and care about one another.
“All of that contributes to the neighbourhood’s strength as well as the development of personal relationships,” said Malatsi.
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