Environmental Monitoring Group

We aim to facilitate processes that lead to healthier, more respectful relationships with each other and the environment.

Society’s impact on the environment is a political act. Decisions about how people use natural resources are usually made by the powerful few for their own benefit, while negative impacts are felt largely by the poor and marginalised. These power imbalances are bad for our society and for the environment.

EMG believes that a strong civil society is necessary for any social, political or economic change. The strength of civil society is not dependent on its engagement with a particular issue, but on its ability to learn, mobilise, network, analyse power dynamics and embody and practice the very values it advocates.

Work done with schools

Environmental club schools programme 

EMG works with five high schools in the Kuils River Catchment Area – in Mfuleni, Khayelitsha and Makhaza, towards environmental health through campaigning for protection and cleaning of rivers and wetlands, schools and communities. We aim to promote an environmental community, working collectively towards the reclaiming and cleaning of the Kuils River, with projects that support the community and address poverty, unemployment and inequality. This is to integrate environmental education into the daily lives of learners and to encourage it to be centered in their learning.

Each environmental club consists of 30 learners from grades 8 – 12 (ages 14 – 18), from five high schools and two representatives made up of Geography and Science teachers. The environmental clubs participate in activities  including, but not limited to, celebration of themes of environmental calendar days, annual action with climate change movements, youth leadership camps, nature reserve excursions, participatory research along the Kuils River, waste management awareness and cleanups, creative arts for social change, and information-sharing workshops.