Riaan Manser: Words of encouragement Eco-Angel Award

th e Eco-angel Award

BLAKE DYASON: LOVE OUR TRAILS

Blake Dyason has been an eco warrior for the past decade. In 2016 Blake challenged 5FM after they held an environmentally unfriendly balloon release and hosted Cape Town’s biggest cleanup at the time. In 2015 Blake started Love our trails, originally an organisation cleaning litter from trails and educating trail users to care for and protect our environment. This has grown over the years with Blake running school talks and workshops. In January 2019 Blake launched a gardening and waste management initiative with his first school, where the children grow their own food for the school kitchen and manage recycling, composting and waste. In March 2020 Blake launched a hiking program with the same school to connect children with nature, showing them the value of nature, and allowing them to experience the benefits of nature, while learning about leadership skills, how to manage anxiety and prevent bullying. In 2018 Blake also spearheaded the partnership between Brownie Points and Shoprite Checkers to host Africa’s biggest cleanup with over 500 groups conducting cleanups across 15 African countries.

JONATHAN LEEMING: ONE WORLD

Author, speaker and conservationist, Jonathan Leeming has written 9 books including Scorpions of Southern Africa, and has spoken in 11 countries. He consults for various organisations and speaks at medical conferences on the subject of envenomation, conservation and sustainability. Jonathan brings a fresh perspective to the world by mixing venomous animal awareness and sustainability, in a unique way. Jonathan’s latest book, One World, bridges the gap between sustainability targets and objectives and the individual’s values and beliefs. One World is not about saving the environment, but rather about saving ourselves who rely upon the environment for our very existence. One World provides a framework that focuses upon the ‘Why” of sustainability rather than the “What”. The One World Ecosystem is a collection of products and services that communicate the message of One World through workshops, presentations, personal development programs, practical experiences and free online tools and resources. Jonathan says ‘Together we can change tomorrow today’.

FORTUNATE MAFETA: YOUTH 4 AFRICAN WILDLIFE

Fortunate Mafeta Phaka is the author of South Africa’s first bilingual frog book, written in isiZulu and English. He is also a Joint PhD candidate in Environmental sciences at Hasselt University and North-West University, and a board member for Youth 4 African Wildlife NPO. Fortunate researches the complex interactions between people’s cultures and the diversity of frogs and reptiles in South Africa. The lessons learned are used to produce outputs, such as the creation of bilingual books, that are written in local languages and cater to people’s curiosities about the environment and promote a conservation ethic. For a culturally diverse country like South Africa this increases social inclusion in environmental matters and affords conservation initiatives greater chance of success because of the increased public buy-in. This focus on sustainability has earned Fortunate five accolades over the past four years. The most recent of these was the SAB Environmental Community Award at the 2019 edition of the SAB Environmental Media & Environmentalism Awards.