One House At A Time

Very good advice!

Join this campaign and let's resuscitate our neighborhoods ~ one house at a time.Pick it up, even if you didn't drop itIf everyone picked up the litter from outside their own house our streets would be cleaner. Make an effort twice a week to do this and you'll be playing a positive part in cleaning up the whole city. Make and print a few leaflets and put them in your neighbors post box inviting them to participate.Change needs a sparkSo you've picked up the litter from in front of your house, now what? Take it to a safe space, somewhere where the smoke won't stink up your neighbors washing or house, and burn it. Do the same with your household rubbish AFTER you've recycled what you can. Sure burning is not the best option but dumping your waste in a public space is even worse. Until service delivery in our communities resumes, it's up to us to work out respectful ways to deal with waste management. After all, it's our rubbish, no-one else's.Walking on broken glassHave you noticed all the broken glass on our verges, roads and pathways? Two Kubatana bloggers, Natasha and Susan, have written about this issue lately. How about making our streets safe for our cyclists, pedestrians and our kids. Don't throw glass bottles on the road - it's just Really Ugly Behavior. Take them home and use them in some way.Fill it inAdopt a pothole. Not very exciting I know but hey, have you seen any municipal workers fixing them lately? If we want to stop the damage to cars and combies, and avoid accidents then we are going to have to do something about the holes in our roads. They're only going to get worse. So work out a plan with your neighbors and take turns in fixing what's in front of you.Unclog itIt's the rainy season and a lot of storm water drains are clogged making the roads flooded at times and making it difficult for pedestrians. Look out for clogged street gutters especially on street corners and arrange with neighbors to remove the soil, rubble and rubbish from them. Get your hands dirty!Switch it off!Help save electricity – that little you do get. Don't leave lights or other electrical appliances that are not in use on throughout the night. Cell phone chargers still consume electricity even when it is left in the socket with the phone disconnected. Although basic cell phone chargers don't consume enormous amounts of energy, when you add up all the cell phone chargers in the country the total energy used still amounts to significant numbers. Turn off other appliances like radios and TVs.We realise that people occupy a variety of dwellings from shacks, to flats and that our shopping centres, which are getting grubbier by the day, represent more challenging circumstances. But in each and every case, if we don't get involved and Do Something, then things will only get worse.Change starts with you!
It has become a common feeling, I believe, as we have watched our heroes falling over the years, that our own small stone of activism, which might not seem to measure up to the rugged boulders of heroism we have so admired, is a paltry offering toward the building of an edifice of hope. Many who believe this choose to withhold their offerings out of shame. This is the tragedy of the world. For we can do nothing substantial toward changing our course on the planet, a destructive one, without rousing ourselves, individual by individual, and bringing our small, imperfect stones to the pile.- Alice WalkerPlease either SMS (+263 912 452201) or email us any suggestions that you have, or campaigns that you're involved in, so that we can learn from each other. You add, we multiply!~ Kubatana