Press / Media | Cadiz News
Cadiz Foundation Ends Year with Support for Environment and Education
17 December 2009
The Cadiz Foundation is supporting a coastal wetland conservation project that is also providing contractual employment to marginalised False Bay communities during the worst recession in modern history.
The donation of R240 000 has been made to the Kommetjie Environmental Awareness Group (KEAG), an NGO employing over 100 people from the impoverished areas of Masiphumelele, Lavender Hill, Red Hill and Ocean View. Funds are being used to maintain a team of coastal workers in the Witsands-Soetwater coastal conservancy. The intention is to protect this unique coastal shelf and wetland area and its pristine ecosystem. Team members will also be involved in a range of maintenance and cleaning programmes, as well as in sand dune stabilisation and greening projects.
The funding, says Dan Ahern, who heads the Cadiz Foundation, comes as a memorandum of understanding that has been signed between the City of Cape Town and KEAG for the ongoing management of the Witsands-Soetwater coastal conservancy and also the Witsands landfill site.
“Since its inception in 1991, KEAG has successfully run a range of job-creating environmental projects of value not only to people living in the Western Cape but also to the growing number of tourists who visit our coastline to experience its wealth of biodiversity. The group has won marine and coastal management awards and has become a specialist in wetland rehabilitation, but its work and its impact goes far wider. KEAG spearheaded the clearing of alien vegetation along the Cape coast. It pioneered permaculture in the Western Cape and has played a key role in baboon management. It has also done important work in beach cleaning and in road clearing on scenic drives.
“Although the majority of our social impact funds go to support education because of our belief that a good education is the best foundation on which to build a healthy and productive future, the Cadiz Foundation has also made it a priority to address environmental risk, which is why we are backing the KEAG initiative. We have been greatly impressed by the purposeful and professional way in which it manages conservation."
The foundation has also donated R10 000 to an educational development project of Chesterhouse, an independent school in Durbanville. Through its partnership programme it shares some of its facilities and resources with the Durbanville Schools Forum, a network of 11 farm schools in the area.
