19 August 2003
The idea of assisting poor families with food while at the same time conserving water has paid off for a student at Saint Teresa’s Mercy School in Rosebank, Johannesburg.
Claire Reid, a grade 11 student at the school, walked away with the 2003 Stockholm Junior Water Prize in Sweden last week, beating competitors from countries such as Russia, Australia and Israel to clinch a R37 000 scholarship to further her studies and sharpen her creative skills.
The prestigious award is bestowed on high-school students for outstanding water-related projects focusing on topics of environmental, scientific, social or technological importance.
The idea that won Reid the prize was her concept of "water wise reel gardening", which conserves water while improving plant growth.
She invented the method where seeds, together with a small amount of fertiliser, are wrapped in strips of newspaper and buried in shallow furrows in the soil, depending on the type of seeds.
According to Reid, the seeds need less water to grow but grow faster due to the fertiliser and carbon provided by the newspaper. The newspaper also keeps the seeds constantly moist, unlike normal gardening, where the soil dries quickly.
Reid said she came up with the idea because she wanted to help people who could not read the back of seed packets, which she also could not understand, she added. She said she also wanted to help poor people to grow food for themselves, while at the same time preserving water.
"I came up with the idea because I really wanted to do something to help poor communities who do not have food and sufficient water."
The Stockholm International Water Institute said the teenager had demonstrated "an innovative, practical, easily applicable technique for planting and successfully germinating seeds in water-scarce areas to improve rural and peri-urban livelihoods.
"This simple and effective seed-planting system cuts down water usage by as much as 80% by reducing water leakage into the soil. Among its many benefits, it keeps seeds moist, so that they can germinate, without wasting water."
Reid's concept also won her the 2003 South African Youth Water Award, initiated by the department of water affairs and forestry to encourage young people to participate in water resource management and to pursue careers in the water sector.
Reid took home a computer, a R11 000 bursary to study at the University of Natal, and the right to represent South Africa in Stockholm.
Runners-up in the national awards, Themba Mathebula and Alpheus Masenya, from Mmatshipi High School in Limpopo, received a special award for their project, which demonstrated how pit toilets and other surface pollution leads to the contamination of the rivers and the water table, their main source of water.
From Kathu High School in the Northern Cape, Jacques Deacon’s project was about the elimination of alien trees, which threaten the existence of indigenous plants because they absorb more water.
Source: BuaNews
