Community cleans Ronnie Bester Park
With just a few hands to help them, The Power of 8000 was recently able to clear a great deal of the town's Ronnie Bester Park and hopes to have more community members on board for its next project.
The group, which is the “operational or action arm/wing” of the White River Ratepayers Association said it was able to clean up at least 95 per cent of the park by moving heaps of rubbish and building materials that had been dumped in the area, and picking up litter.
The Power of 8000 project manager, Lisa Gordon-Davis, said the park is just one of the things the group is looking at and that its mandate is to get White River to be a “clean, tidy, functional world-class town”. She said while there had not been many residents who participated, the clean-up was still successful and she hoped for larger
crowds in the future.
“We are hoping to have an action day soon to clear our main street of all weeds, rubbish and the muck in the gutters,” said Gordon-Davis. “Several individuals have put huge amounts of their own time and money into this project.” She said one of The Power of 8000 committee members, Rhodes Abell, goes out every Saturday to cut and clear areas in White River and surrounds.
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Following the Ronnie Bester clean-up on Saturday, Gordon-Davis and another committee member, Pierre du Preez, thanked those who had come to help. “We want to give a special thanks to our cash donors who helped us pay for labour and materials to clean up the park,” said Gordon-Davis.
“We also want to thank those who gave donations in kind such as Apiesdoring Tree Felling, Bahati for a TLB, and Yoons Eatery for refreshments,” she said. Du Preez added that the City of Mbombela had also been involved in the clean-up by providing ride-on lawn mowers that cut a large portion of the park’s grass. He said a group of teens had also joined on Saturday and cleaned up Ronnie Bester’s parking lot.
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“It takes a lot of effort and we are so grateful to those who contributed in any way they could to clearing the park,” he said. Gordon-Davis called on other organisations as well as locals to rally and work with The Power of 8000 to help clean White River.
“We have identified some priorities to be tackled in our town. If we work together we can align and thus concentrate our joint actions and resources for greater impact,” she said. “For example, many of the local schools have community service requirements for their pupils and we would love for them to contact us so we can harness this capacity effectively and get the ‘right’ work done,” she said.
To get involved with the clean-up and to learn more about their initiative, visit The Power of 8000 on Facebook. Through the page, you can join its WhatsApp group and keep up to date on future projects and clean-ups.
