Adopt a Park initiative: Rietvallei residents heed the call
The community of Rietvallei heeded the call and decided to maintain and restore public facilities and parks.
Mogale City Local Municipality’s (MCLM) Biodiversity Management Division recently invited the public to play a role in maintaining and improving local parks by participating in the city’s Adopt a Park programme.
“This programme encourages interested parties to take pride in their local communities and strives to foster a sense of ownership and responsibility, leading to increased community engagements and stronger neighbourhood ties,” said MCLM communications officer Refilwe Mahlangu.
In Rietvallei, residents have welcomed the initiative with open arms when more than 30 people in the community arrived at the local park recently armed with brooms, sandpaper, paint and plastics to make a difference.
• Also read: ‘Help maintain our parks’ – municipality to public
According to the organiser of the park clean-up, Katlego Motingoa, the mission of the day was to ensure their public facility was given a much-needed facelift and restore a sense of pride in the community.
“It was important for us as the youth of the community to identify a problem and come up with a solution, for example, our park has not been cleaned in three months and there are objects that need to be removed because of the harm they cause. As the youth of Rietvallei, we came together. This was to show that we can make an impact as the youth and this was a start. We hope to shape our community in the best way,” Katlego said.
On top of cleaning up, he wanted to lead by example by encouraging the youth to play a part in the community by being productive and not losing their way and getting involved in doing the wrong things.
“This clean was just the start to get our youth to be more responsible and productive,” he concluded.
