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The George Municipality’s Poster Competition on Energy Sustainability came to an end on Monday 7th June, when the two winning schools in the high school and primary school categories, Outeniqua High School and Outeniqua Primary School were announced and the Mayor of George presented them with their prizes.

Mayor van Wyk was in awe of the standard of work of both the primary and high school learners. He told the learners that he is not only impressed by their artwork but by their thinking. “We are all experiencing the inconvenience of loadshedding. We need to move into other forms of energy by wind, sun and other methods. This is the future of our world and our world is changing rapidly. It is awesome that you are part of that change,” he said.

Van Wyk said to the learners that you are the generation that will use renewable energy and it is great that you had this opportunity to showcase your thoughts. He congratulated the winners and thanked all of the schools that participated and made the competition a success.

The first prize winners (Primary and High School) both received a  R5000 stationery voucher. The second prize in the primary school category went to Mzoxolo Primary school who received a R2000 stationery voucher. The third prize winner in the Primary School category is Holy Cross Convent and won a R1000 stationery voucher.

The second prize winner in the High School category is Parkdene High School and won a R1500 stationery voucher. There is no third prize for high schools as there were only 3 participating schools.

In total 10 schools participated, 3 High Schools and 7 Primary Schools. All the learners who participated in the competition received goody bag packages as a token of appreciation. The other schools that participated were Kretzenshoop Primary School, Hibernia Primary School, Dellville Park Primary School, McKinley Reid High School and Thembalethu Primary School.

Thabo Yiga from the Electrotechnical Directorate who drove the project with the other interns at the Directorate, thanked all the ten schools for participating in the George Municipality's Energy Sustainability Competition. “The posters clearly show that the learners took the competition seriously and worked hard to produce quality work,”  Yiga said. 

Learners were meant to reflect their understanding of Energy Sustainability in the poster. The posters were judged by effort, art and creativity and message.

Some of the teachers and learners shared their experiences during the competition.

Leoni Selzer, Art teacher at Outeniqua Primary School said the process taught them how very important it is to save the world we live in and it was an incredibly great opportunity for the learners to research their own work and work on their art pieces.

Kyla Nel (12), a grade 6 learner, said she wanted to make people aware that our earth is dying.

Linske Steenkamp (11), also a grade 6 learner, said she drew an eye with the idea to change people’s view on how they saw the world, how we are to fix people’s eyes on the problem we need to solve.

An-Sophie Buchholz (12), a grade 7 pupil, said her painting depicted the earth warming up to the extent that it has a detrimental effect on the survival of wildlife like the polar bear.

Mari Coetzee, Art teacher at Outeniqua High School, said it was important to them to participate in the competition to get our younger generation thinking about preserving nature and thinking of alternative solutions to our energy needs.

Marlo Barnard (16), a grade 11 learner, said it was great coming together as a team, while his teammate, Wessel Janse van Rensburg (17), grade 11, said they are grateful for the opportunity and had loads of fun. They have used recycled paper from old exam books and magazines for the task.

George Municipality is part of the Energy Efficiency and Demand Side Management (EEDSM) programme funded by the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy. The Municipality received grant funding of R4.5 million for the solar PV project at the George Municipality Main Building parking area and part of the requirements is to spend 1% of that grant funding on creating an energy awareness campaign.

Sustainable energy is power which is able to be replenished within a human lifetime and so cause no long-term damage to the environment. Sustainable energy includes all renewable energy sources, such as hydroelectricity, biomass, geothermal, wind, wave, tidal and solar energies.

Issued by George Municipality