World Cleanup Day 2022

To commemorate World Cleanup Day 2022, we brought our 100 Skills & Soup participants for tours at Pheha Plastic in Morija.

Our theme for 2022 was ‘REFUSE’, ‘REDUCE’ and ‘RECYCLE’, especially for single use plastic, and thinking about a future where we don’t need cleanup campaigns.

Although Skills & Soup participants have been participating in environmental education, the tours allowed the participants to experience recycling hands-on, and see waste transform into a valuable item.

Through the tours, the participants gained a deeper understanding of the potential of a circular economy in our community. Increasing awareness of the value of recycled plastic can help reduce the amount that ends up in our rivers, and eventually the ocean.

Special thanks to Pheha Plastic for hosting us all week, and to Glasswaters Foundation for their support! Big thanks also to Vodacom Lesotho Foundation and European Union in Lesotho for sponsoring incredible prizes for our participants, given out as rewards for good participation and answering difficult questions about what they have learned!

The Hub’s experience with cleanup campaigns:

World Environment Day 2022

With support from the Delegation of the European Union to the Kingdom of Lesotho, The Hub hosted 180 students from 3 primary schools for 3 days of World Environment Day activities from June 1-3, 2022.

World Environment Day (June 5) was celebrated under the theme #OnlyOneEarth. Led by the United Nations Environment Programme and held annually since 1973, the event is the largest global platform for environmental outreach. It engages governments, businesses, academia and millions of people around the world.

We have #OnlyOneEarth. Let’s take care of it.

The 2022 World Environment Day campaign #OnlyOneEarth calls for collective, transformative action on a global scale to celebrate, protect and restore our planet.

The Hub hosted 180 students from Matsieng to tour our photography exhibition on climate change and environmental degradation. Some students won exciting prizes for answering difficult questions about what they have learned! The Hub also handed out copies of our environmental education posters to all the students.

We were honoured to have the Head of the European Union Delegation to the Kingdom of Lesotho, Paola Amadei, with us on Friday, June 3!

Special thanks to the European Union in Lesotho for their support of the tours! Big thanks to Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa and European Union in Lesotho for supporting the photography workshop which this exhibition is the result of. Big thanks also to the UK in Lesotho for supporting the printing of the exhibition and the creation of the take-home learning materials.

For more about World Environment Day visit: https://www.worldenvironmentday.global/

Exhibition: Climate change and environmental degradation

To mark Earth Day, The Hub opened an outdoor exhibition on climate change and environmental degradation on April 22, 2022. The exhibition is the result of a workshop at The Hub on storytelling in photography in 2019, and was forced on hold due to the Covid-19 pandemic. We’re so happy to finally be able to share the participants’ work! The exhibition is free and open to the public on the grounds of Morija Museum & Archives.

We are offering free guided tours of the exhibition. Contact us @ +266 5888 8387 if you want a tour of the exhibition. Pop-ins are also welcome!

Special thanks to all the partners who made our climate change exhibition possible: UK in Lesotho, Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa, European Union in Lesotho, Glasswaters Foundation and Vodacom Lesotho Foundation.

Thanks to UK in Lesotho and Glasswaters Foundation, we’ve also been able to hand out some of our take-home learning materials.

We also have a ‘Climate Change and Inclusive Design in Urban Planning’ exhibition by Rise – Relationships Inspiring Social Enterprise on display.

Covid-19 Education

Since August 2021, and in partnership with The British High Commission, The Hub has continued to deliver Covid-19 awareness sessions for adults and elders at existing gatherings in Morija and Matsieng. The facilitators are utilising The Hub’s Covid-19 educational content to bust the many myths around the vaccine.

Photo by Motseki Tsekoa for The Hub

Schools’ Covid-19 Education

● 32 sessions

● 1,000+ participants

● Students & teachers at ECCD, Primary-, High and vocational schools

● 1,000+ information packets handed out

Photo by Motseki Tsekoa for The Hub

Elders’ Covid-19 Education

● 32 sessions

● 1,000+ participants at existing gatherings

● 400+ masks handed out

● 1,000+ information packets handed out

Photo by Motseki Tsekoa for The Hub

The Hub conducts programming surveys for participants to measure changes in knowledge and attitude. Below are a few comments from the anonymous surveys:

“I learned that even when I got the vaccine I still need to protect myself.”

– Participant in Elders’ Covid-19 awareness session

“I learned that Covid-19 vaccine does not cure the virus, it only teaches the body how to fight the virus.”

– Participant in Elders’ Covid-19 awareness session

World Cleanup Day 2021

After commemorating World Cleanup Day virtually in 2020, we were excited to hold educational workshops and a cleanup from September 13 – 18, 2021. Skills & Soup hosted Multinodal Developments Consultants and Pheha Plastic as guest facilitators, who delivered fun, educational activities for 100 children.

Environmental education helps kids understand why the environment is important and provides them with the building blocks they need to live eco-friendly and sustainable lives.

Climate Change, single-use plastic, and littering are urgent issues that we need to address. Lesotho is famed for its natural beauty, and we need to do better to protect our fragile environment.

All the litter that was picked up was sorted for Pheha Plastic to take recyclable plastics, and Nebulart Recycling Group took the rest for creating plastic sand bricks.

Big thanks to Glasswaters Foundation and Shirley Hall for their support of World Cleanup Day 2021 at The Hub! Thanks also to Morija Museum & Archives for hosting us!

The Hub has held annual community cleanups since 2017, but in 2020 we commemorated World Cleanup Day virtually due to Covid-19. Watch the videos below for more from previous cleanups at The Hub:

World Cleanup Day 2020

World Cleanup Day 2019