The director at the Department of Economic, Small Business Development, Tourism and Environmental Affairs (Destea), responsible for Environmental Affairs, Kekeletso Ntsala, says this year’s programme marks the 29th year of existence and it will be held at the Gariep Forever Resorts.

 The aim behind the Environmental Quiz Programme is to work towards a clean, green, healthy, and more sustainable environment, to teach grade 6 learners to think critically about their environment and to encourage participation to solve some of the environmental problems in their respective schools’ environment as well as assist teachers with environmental activities in the grade 6 syllabus.

Ntsala explains that from Friday 21 October to Saturday 22 October, 15 different groups have been selected after other rounds, to compete and explain what a clean environment is. “The learners are expected to do a presentation for the judges on how they would do the project so that the judges can see what has been learned in the different rounds.”

The learners will be judged on the presentation, and also on the competition where they have to create their interpretation of a clean environment. She says this Environmental Quiz Programme is all about what it means to look after the environment and environmental awareness. 

In her closing remarks, she reflected on the previous rounds. They saw learners from about 156 schools in the province, with 4 600 learners who participated. She says there could have been more schools, so she is appealing to different schools to take environmental affairs seriously. There might be children who have an interest in a career in environmental affairs. “This programme has been in existence for 29 years and we just started seeing growth, as we had more schools this year as compared to the previous years. We are hopeful to see the number grow as the years go.”

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