On Thursday 28 March, a group of students from Rhodes University gave up their lunch break to help clean up rubbish around the Fingo area. The students included Hayley Skerrit, the Chairperson of the Rhodes University Canoe Club, David O’Beirne, the Head of Community Engagement, Grant Hewitt, Patrick Dillon, Dani Honey and Sergio de Souza.
They gathered together opposite the B.B. Zondani Hall to start a clean up challenge. “We are starting up a clean up challenge,” said O’Beirne. They were going to take a picture and post it to social media to challenge other organisations and sports club to do the same. “As the city is not in a good way in rubbish removal, it will be cool to get people coming out of the University to help out,” said O’Beirne.
“We can blame the municipality but we also need to take responsibility of helping ourselves,” said Skerrit. “We are here to make a difference to the community, as we know trash is a big issue. [We want to make] our area little bit cleaner, at the same time involve the kids and teach them to clean up the community, then we can make a big difference and that will be awesome. The state of the town, piles are so big and they just don’t know where to start,” said Skerritt.