Conservation Work
          

 
  K.E.L.P.

In April 2008 I moved to Cape Town from Durban to work with my brother Adam who had more work than he could handle in running his KELP project while preparing the Shark Centre at Kalk Bay for its launch.

I became involved with the Shark centre as well as running KELP (Kelp Environmental Learning Project) The project was designed by Adam to create jobs and awareness for conservation by making vuvuzelas out of kelp leading up to the 2010 world cup. The project provides opportunities to earn income by giving value to raw kelp and the plan is to develop workshops and a base through which to market the product which will continue after the world cup. Workers are taught skills needed to paint the vuvuzelas and are able to earn a living by this work.

 

       The KEAG KELP Team - Mike, Lennox, Luyanda, Mike C, Xolani, Sipho and Sibongile

      

Workers also learn about kelp and conservation through the process of collecting raw kelp along the coastline. We developed a KELP education programme where people learn visit the  rock pools and beach to learn about marine life and the kelp forests and then return to the workshop to paint their own vuvuzela.

We have also developed vuvu designs for use in environmental education and to draw attention to wildlife issues. We designed a set of the endangered frogs of the Western Cape for CT Youth Environment School (YES) and Two Oceans.

While Adam handled customers and finances it has been my job to collect kelp, train the workers, develop new designs and develop an education programme.

The project has been very popular with the media leading up to the 2010 world cup and we were having so much attention from the media that we could get little work done. We appeared a number of times on TV with various shows and in many newspaper articles. The staff began complaining that in their community they were seen so often on TV that their houses were getting broken into as people thought they must be rich and famous.  

The project began in Adam's garage. As the project grew we linked to KEAG (Kommetjie Environmental Awareness Group) where we worked as a project of KEAG based at Imhoff Farm, Kommetjie. We were able to receive very generous funding from Deutsch Bank and Cadiz and a great deal of very generous support and encouragement from a number of organizations including Lindie Buirski and the CT YES Programme.

We were able to grow the project to a point where we had three workshops. One at KEAG, one at the Ocean View Handicapped centre and one at Streetwires in Cape Town. At this stage we had 25 staff members and were producing thousands of vuvuzelas of all descriptions.

As the project grew others have taken over the production workshops I developed and I am concentrating on developing the education programme which is linked to the work I have been doing at the Shark centre.

Highlights for me were being interviewed by CNN and successfully doing our education programme at the MCEN (Marine Coastal Educators Network) conference in January 2010 where it went down very well. 

I am currently running the education programme as an independent program that can be done at a variety of venues and this is also part of our regular education programme at the Shark Centre.

You can see more info about the education programme on the SOS shark centre and Education programs  pages.