Riding bicycles to school will keep learners fit
“We want to encourage to use bicycles to go to school instead of cars.”
A total of 50 bicycles will be donated to five primary schools in Mamelodi and Nellmapius.
The bicycles will be donated as part of a joint six months educational programme organised by Tshwane metro’s environmental care and Thandanani Drop Inn centre aimed to raise awareness about climate change and carbon emissions.
Thabo Kgotsi of Thandanani centre said the aim was to encourage the use of bicycles to go to school instead of using cars.
“Carbon emissions also cause the climate to change and teaching learners at an early age to use bicycles as transport will make a huge difference, especially with climate change,” said Kgotsi.
“Our mandated duties are not only limited to empowering learners with food gardens for healthy nutritional meals, caring for their environment, recycling and being warriors of the battle against global warming but we are also promoting fewer carbon emissions by cycling and a healthy lifestyle.
“Riding bicycles to go to school is also good for their health as they will keep fit at all times.
“The bicycles were donated with safety gears and we also received recycling bins to be donated to the five schools,” he said.
The programme also promoted the issue of organic food and encouraging learners to start food gardening at their homes.
Kgotsi said they have already identified five families that will help start their own food gardening.
“The programme focused on environmental advocacy, nature conservation and preservation, effects of illegal dumping and littering, recycling, adverse consequences and the implications of global warming,” he said.
“Good health is not only the absence of diseases or sickness but a complete state of mental, emotional and social well-being.”
Many learners across the community faced the problem of affordable and reliable transportation to ferry them to and from school and bicycles were a better alternative.
He said what they were doing with the city of Tshwane may only be a drop in the ocean for now, “but even a single drop of rain changes the mass of an ocean”.
“We are hoping more donors will see the potential in this programme and lend a helping hand to further advance it by chipping in for the good of the children,” said Kgotsi.
He said that they would love to see the day when everything was in place.
“The gardens flourishing and the children reaping what they have sown, bicycles clubs around our community and a fully-fledged recycling system.”
The date of the official handover has yet to be set.
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