Jacaranda FM's Project Waterdrop drills first borehole for sustainable relief
On Wednesday 20 June 2018, the first Jacaranda FM Project Waterdrop borehole was drilled at the Kleinberg Primary School and Ocean View LSEN (Learners with Special Education Needs) School in the Western Cape – offering a sustainable water solution, come rain or drought.
The borehole was drilled in the grounds of Kleinberg Primary, to benefit the 1100 learners at Kleinberg Primary and the 100 special needs learners at Ocean View.
Jacaranda FM’s Breakfast with Martin Bester launched Project Waterdrop 2018 in February, in response to requests from listeners to assist the drought-stricken Western Cape. The project set out to drill boreholes, which would also be fitted with pumps, to benefit schools in vulnerable areas.
The Western Cape Education Department and Cape Town Water Crisis Committee confirmed that rural schooling communities are the most vulnerable when drought hits. Without water, the ablution facilities at these schools can’t be used. So essentially: No water, no school. Although the Department is funding water container tanks at all affected schools, to take the ablution facilities off the municipal water grid, they do not have the funds to drill boreholes. The schools would be responsible to fund their own boreholes, which again leaves the vulnerable communities with the highest threat of drought-related school closure.
“Today marked the first step of Project Waterdrop, that started with thousands of people in Pretoria, coming full circle in the Western Cape”, says Jacaranda FM breakfast host, Martin Bester. “The elation of these kids the moment the water bubbled to the surface is something you had to be here to fully appreciate. There’s no doubt in my mind that Jacaranda FM has the most caring and giving community of listeners in South Africa, prepared to step up and help where it is needed most.”
As part of the awareness campaign for Project Waterdrop, Jacaranda FM and the Blue Bulls partnered on 31 March, to fill-up Loftus for the Super Rugby clash between the Vodacom Bulls and DHL Stormers. This was a massive success, with close to 30 000 people in attendance and more than 122-thousand litres of donated drinking water collected on the day, distributed to Western Cape school districts in need by DHL and Quatro Security. Several individuals and companies – including kykNET’s Toks ‘n Tjops - also rallied behind the project by adopting schools – covering the full R50 000 needed to set up a borehole.
Former Springbok Captain, Jean de Villiers, who was also one of the driving forces behind Project Waterdrop, sent this message to the Jacaranda FM team: “The reality is, only once you don’t have water, do you realise how important it is. Today we’re seeing a team drill a borehole to help with the problems we have here in the Cape. It’ll make a massive difference to the schools involved, to the community, to all the people and to the broader Western Cape. Thank you so, so much to everyone involved, to Martin Bester and the team and to the listeners who helped. This shows again what we can achieve when we stand together as South Africans!”
Several of the schools in the Cape Metro and West Coast, earmarked by this project, are LSEN-schools, servicing the children of poor, disadvantage households, where unemployment and need are the norm.
