On Thursday we were visited by 25 trainees from Metrorail who will be involved with promoting tourism and who needed to learn about the various tourist attractions within easy access of the train route.
They were brought to the centre by Keith Edwards. He visited last week to discuss possibilities of bringing groups of tourists to the centre as part of the programme leading up to and involving the 2010 soccer world cup as well as bringing groups of children regularly to the centre as part of the Edutrain programme. This was an opportunity to develop our relationship with Metrorail further and to reach more people with our education programme. Lesley gave a presentation and after this they were shown the award winning video ‘Sharks in Deep Trouble.’
Terry gave a lecture and I showed them how I do the rock pool lesson. All went well. The previous day we were visited by a group of children from Kewtown Primary School in Athlone. We did a clean up of the Dalebrook Beach and I told them afterwards how important their contribution was. I explained how a few months ago this beach had been littered with broken glass, bricks and rubble and stones from the railway line above. The bricks had been so long on the beach that they were worn round. As part of our clean-up during national clean-up week (September) we had removed a truck load of these bricks. These were used for paving in Masiphumelele. Rounded pieces of glass were used by Charmaine to decorate a ceramic pot.
I explained how the beach had been changed in a few hours by a few children after standing neglected for many years and how this demonstrated how simply a meaningful difference can be made. The teacher of this group told me he would prepare a petition for the kids to sign requesting that a wall be built by Metrorail along the edge of the railway line to keep the stones from falling down and that they would arrange a visit to move the remaining stones off the beach.
This was a great way to end the lesson and the following day we were sent this petition signed by the children which we presented to Metrorail. All in all good progress for our education programme. Michael Carnegie and Terry Corr.