If you’re taking the first steps in planning a more environmentally responsible event you could be forgiven for being confused as to whether you should go sustainable, green or carbon neutral.  Or are we simply talking semantics? 

Last year saw many high profile ’carbon neutral’ events where the carbon footprint, ie the C02 emissions were calculated and offset through specialist companies; the G8 Summit, Live Earth..many companies, cities and even the Vatican, pop bands and celebrities are going carbon neutral.  

The true value to the environment of going carbon neutral depends on the amount of emissions that have been reduced and the way in which the offset companies are spending the funds.  (Did you know it takes 15 trees, 40 to 50 years to absorb 5 tonnes of carbon whereas 1 energy efficient lightbulb saves 1/2 tonne c02 in it’s lifetime?). 

But is going carbon neutral the best way forward?

By staging a sustainable event, you not only reduce carbon emissions and look to replacing the use of natural resources by investing in effective projects (ie renewable energy sources) but you also include considerations to minimise the negative ecological, cultural and social impact of your event on the environment.  Ie, how is your event going to make the world a better place - and make you money.

Later this year the new BS8901 Sustainable Event Management  will be launched.  It provides a much welcome starting point that enables us to look inward and take stock of the systems, processes and work practices we currently use and how we can begin to revise our approach and set the systems in place in order to work, quite simply, in a more environmentally responsible way.

If you’d like to see a copy of the draft of BS8901 just email us at info@paragoneurope.com.  (NB:the closing date for public comment has passed).

What are your views on Carbon Offsetting.  Is it possible for a ‘Carbon Neutral’ event to truly neutralise the effect of it’s carbon emissions?

Paragon’s view is that offsetting should only be undertaken as a last resort when all possible measures have been exhausted to negate or reduce the potential for C02 emissions.  Only when this has been done do we look to replacing, ie to fund or support a sustainable project that is working globally to reduce carbon emissions.

And that doesn’t mean planting trees. Although it’s a nice gesture to plant the odd tree as a gift or memorial, it would take 4 planets-worth of newly planted trees to make a worthwhile impact on C02 emissions, and you’d have to wait about 100 or so years. And if they die or burn, they release tons of carbon back into the atmosphere.

We also need to choose our offsetting companies carefully. Paragon use Climate Care.

We’ve come across one interesting view on the subject - a report published by the Carbon Trade Watch. “The Carbon Offset Myth”.

Have a read and tell us your views. Download .pdf

(Paragon joined the C&IT CSR Challenge in South Africa team to KwaZulu-Natal, SA, 3 - 9 Sept - on a two-day build of two houses at the Mziki Argi Village project and visited some amazing destination properties -read all about it here).

Wow..lot’s to organise!  I’ve just taken my first malaria tablet today….

Managed to elbow my way through a bunch of builders yesterday to buy steel cap boots - only to find they don’t do them in girlie sizes (funny that!), so I’ve bought a pair 2 sizes too big.  I’ve also got a hard hat, pair of safety goggles and 4 sets of building gloves.  We’ve been told it’s best to put talc into the gloves as we’re going to get very sweaty.  And on I can’t tell you the trouble I’ve had trying to find a bandana (also on the list of ‘must bring’).  When was the last time you saw anyone in a bandana?  Still - best to be prepared.

Anyhow, I’m very excited and a little apprehensive, but my motto is always to try and do one thing each day that scares me.  However, we’re all in very safe hands with South African Tourism and Habitat for Humanity.

The final Itinerary looks truly amazing.  Here’s just a very brief run down:

• Monday - fly out to Durban
• Tuesday - arrive and travel to ‘Kings Grant Country Retreat’ where we’ll be staying during the build.  Country and safety briefing followed by a ‘braai’ - traditional SA BBQ
• Wednesday - off to the building area at the Mziki Agri Village Project for a day of building and community interaction (we’ve included their profiles in the diary).  Really looking forward to meeting them
• Thursday - more building with the promise of a sundowner and snack at the ‘brickfield dam’ at the end of the day
• Friday - fly to Phinda to stay at the Phinda Mountain Lodge (lots happening here - including a snake presentation?…!)
• Saturday - whale shark tagging, tracking them via GPS and maybe going up in a plane or on a boat to spot them
• Sunday - travel to the Zimbali Coastal Resort…

The Challenge team are home.

Read Jac’s Daily Africa Diary - her personal record of this amazingly rewarding, educational and exciting Challenge and CSR incentive programme:

Building for two families at the Mziki Agri Village, KwaZulu-Natal and visit to a local school.
Kings Grant retreat, Phinda Private Game Reserve, Safari, Zulu Warriors, whale shark tagging, snakes and more…

Didn’t sleep much as excited, so got up at 5am to do some last minute washing and re-packing of bag.  No matter which way I tried I couldn’t get the builders boots in, so had to resort to 2 bags.  Thought I’d donate the them and the hat to the Project after the build. 

Dashed to the office to finish a couple of things and now I’m ready to go.  The cab comes at 2pm to take me to Heathrow to tie up with the rest of the Challenge Team.  Then it’s off we go…

It’ll be late Tuesday before I can post another installment…when we arrive at Kings Grant, Ixopo, KwaZulu-Natal.

Jacqui Loftus, Paragon’s MD packed steel toed boots and hard hat before jetting off to KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa from 3 – 9 September to take part in a three-day build at the Mziki Agri Village project, in the Ixopo area of South Africa. 

Talk about intrepid!  What will be next - skydiving, the 3 peaks.  Needless to say we’re all very proud of her and looked forward to reading her daily diary on our blog.

But what was it all about?  Well, was an amazing challenge that brought together environmental education and emotional hands on experience when the chosen team worked together with local families to help build two houses. Plus a fabulous opportunity to enjoy some of what South Africa has to offer the incentive traveller.

Conference & Incentive Travel Magazine threw out their first ever CSR challenge to the events industry to show their commitment to CSR by outlining how their policy had developed over the past 12 months.

Paragon was one of 10 agencies chosen to take part.   

“The purpose of the event is two-fold,” says C&IT editor Yasmin Razak. “We want to highlight the agencies that have made the strongest commitment to CSR and put it at the heart of their agenda during the two years of our campaign. Additionally, we want to provide a clear template of an incentive that can be pitched to clients who need their event solutions to match their CSR policy.”

The event is supported by events industry association Eventia and arranged by C&IT in association with South African Tourism, Charity Challenge and the charity Habitat for Humanity.

Sanibonnani!  (Good afternoon).

We’re here!  Arrived at Kings Grant, Ixopo, today just around lunchtime after nearly 18 hours of travelling, to a welcome buffet lunch and, so we gathered, a very rare treat.  All of the staff came out and sang two traditional Zulu songs especially to greet us.  Dressed in their work gear, cleaners, cooks….all with the most wonderful voices.  Absolutely fantastic.

We’ve just come out of an informative briefing,  covering safety on site during the build, cultural considerations and what to expect during the week.  We also had a briefing from Sue from Habitat for Humanity.  The Charity has thousands of building projects throughout the world.  

The project we’re helping with is the Mizki Agri Village, about 30km from Ixopo, where HFH have bought some land adjacent to a village and by completely integrating and involving the local community, are building solid homes to replace their mud and wattle houses (that disintegrate in wet weather), working with the families to provide the means to farm, have clean water, a school, Church and establishing a sustainable environment.

We will be helping to build a house for each of two families.  The build is only part of what we’ll be doing over the next two days.  We’ll be working alongside the families, talking to them, getting to know them, so we can understand their lives more, as well as providing them with extra hands.  The community drives the project - it’s very much theirs and we’re all really looking forward to meeting them.

I’m lucky to be sharing this experience with a great bunch of people, all of whom have been chosen for their commitment to CSR.

They are:

Lucy Collins from Black Tomato, Julia Jawnyj from Euro Skybridge, Izania Downie- Eventia, Aileen Reuter-Maritz, John Strachan-Maximillion, Fional Pelham-Organise This, Bernadette Moss-Universal CIT, Victoria Pratt-World Events and John Kelly-Zibrant. 

Our Hosts:

Rufus Bullough from Charity Challenge, Yasmin Razak-Conference & Incentive Travel Magazine, Patricia D’Arcy-South African Tourism and Brad Glen and Taryn Paola from DMC, Inside Edge.

We’ve settled into our comfortable rooms and I’m about to go down for dinner.  After that, it’s definitely to bed!  We’re up at 6am tomorrow for breakfast and then to travel to the Village.

MORE ABOUT THE MZIKI AGRI VILLAGE & KINGS GRANT:

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We all met for a great cooked breakfast at 6am at Kings Grant.

Then, running a little late, as we all had such a good night’s sleep after our flights, we boarded the bus with our rucksacks, hard hats and building paraphernalia and set off for Mziki village.

Alf our driver, is great and full of stories and a few dirty jokes! He, Sue from Habitat for Humanity and Gavin from Africa Exposure are all staying at Kings Grant with us.  40 mins later after rattling through the bush dirt tracks past the wonderful countryside, peppered with small round Kraals, we arrived at Mziki village.

We peered through the now steamed windows to see two plots side by side where foundations had already be laid and and one course of bricks (yes….just the one!).

Sue called all the villagers who are working on the two houses to join us. We stood in a circle whilst a lovely lady called Eunice said a Zulu prayer.

We were given our work cry of dagga dagga dagga, oy oy oy. The villagers find this very amusing as dagga is Zulu for cement!

We were split into two groups and worked with the two women who will be benefiting from the new houses, Lalisile Dlamini and Tholakelle Ngubane, and the local Mziki village site supervisors. (See more about Lalisile and Tholakelle here.)

Each team nominated a member as a ‘water fairy’ to make sure we are all drinking lots of fluids throughout the day.

There was a cool breeze coming up from the valley so the 25 degrees did feel cooler which was great for us to work in.

Bongiwi is the supervisor for our house. She’s 24 and her family live in the huts in the kraal next to where we are building. She is one of 13 children and her family will be having a house built in phase two of this programme. She is currently living with one of her elder sisters in one of the houses up the hill from our build site.

So we got stuck in.  Moving breeze blocks, off of lorries and placing them in piles around the outside of the house.

All the while mixing dagga dagga….lots and lots of dagga dagga!

Enjoying lunch and chat with Bongiwi

Having arrived at 9am with a tea break at 11, we were hungry and very ready for lunch at 1.30.

At lunch we had an opportunity to ask the two families questions about themselves and their lives.

Tholakele said that the new house will change her life. At the moment she and her family live in basically a run-down hut. They have to cook on open fires in the centre of the room and the smoke from the fires cause respiratory problems. Also white ants get into the mud and wattle and the walls just start to crumble.

The weather has closed in and it’s now quite chilly, misty, wet and damp (can you believe it!) and we’re all wearing jumpers.

We set off again to the site by bus for day 2 of the build, but this time we detoured through a small shanty village and arrived at a guarded gate to a local school.

We were greeted by the Principle, a lady who’s been with the school since 1985, who was to show us round.

We meet the Principle of the school

As we parked and got out of the bus we could see at every window, happy little faces looking back at us and waving.  Then one of the windows swung open and the we could hear the children excitedly calling out and clapping.  The children at the back were all straining to see us, so little heads were bobbing up and down as they jumped up to catch a glimpse of us.

It was overwhelming.  There are 230 children at the school, taught within 6 blocks of 2 classrooms each.  In 1985 the school was just a hut and as the number of children grew the villagers built one school block themselves, making the cement blocks by hand.  Over the years they have built 3 more blocks and the government paid for the building of two more.

A lot of these children are orphans whose parents have died from HIV.  Families are poor and many of these children would starve if were not for the school feeding them.

We asked if we could see the kitchens as we could smell food cooking.  The Principle lead us to a hut, little more than a shed.  6′ x 6′.  In the centre of the floor was a fire and on top, a large cauldron.  The pot is left on all day cooking a stew of meat, maize and vegetables. 

Smoke was bellowing out from the hut and as I walked in it choked me and my eyes were watering so much I had to leave.  How the women cooked in here each day I don’t know.  But they provided one hot meal a day for each of the children.  There is a school garden where they try and grow vegetables but there’s not much at moment as they’re just coming out of Winter.

For most children this was the only meal they would have in a day.  Many of the children walked to school from local villages, some up to 6km each way, even the little 5 year olds.  No breakfast before they leave, and no dinner waiting for them after their long journey home.

By the time many of them arrive they are exhausted and we saw some of the younger ones having a nap in their classroom with their heads resting on their hands at their desk.

One of the women we met was a care worker.  She visits the school once a week to check the health of each and every child here.  At the school they don’t test the children for HIV but the care worker explained that they can always tell first by the child’s eyes and then if they have sores.  She also looks after the children with general illnesses.

As we visited each class we had a chance to chat to the children.  We asked some of them what they wanted to be when they grew up. Most said policeman, teacher, nurse or care worker….as these are the people they normally come across in their daily life.  A couple of the children said they wanted to be white, but didn’t know why and one wanted to be Chinese but didn’t know why! 

We asked them what games they liked to play and football was very popular, although they had no sports gear or equipment whatsoever…and they had never heard of David Beckham…hardly suprising really!

At the end of our visit Habitat for Humanity and the various agencies in the project donated some games and equipment to the school and we were treated to a Tribal dance as we left and the children gave us an overwhelming farewell.

The visit left us extremely emotional and the bus was very quiet on the way to the building site.

The fundamental thing, what hit me the most, was that out of all of this was that the children were so pleased to see us and so open and loving and so willing to learn and better themselves.  A stark contrast to the UK where our children have everything - and take it forgranted.  These children have nothing, not even electricity, yet they have such incredible enthusasm for learning.  But they do achieve some great successes.  One child went on to university, another works at a supermarket.

One of the School blocks

Arrived at the site for another day of hard, but enjoyable graft.

We were told that we worked well and that we been there for the full 5 days (the usual volunteer build period) we would definitely have completed the houses.

For the last two days we’ve been working with a lady called Bongiwi and her mother.  The mother is a great character and although she can’t speak a work of English, I suspected that she could understand more than she was letting on.  She had spent most of the morning on site with us, singing and dancing and saying how wonderful the house was going to be.  She was a great encourager and helped us to speed up and put in that extra effort.

So, the final day of our build came to an end.  We tidied up the site and we all gathered for a final Zulu prayer.

We were then invited into Bongiwi’s Kraal (the enclosure within which a series of huts are built as and when the family grows) to meet the rest of her family.  It was amazing and a privilege to be invited in.  Each of the huts were very clean and had a small amount of electricity, just enough for a light and perhaps one cooker ring, but most families still use fires.

Then we said our goodbyes with lots of hugs and a few tears. It was very hard to leave and a very emotional experience.

We all felt so humbled by the stamina, the resilience and the overwhelming sense of determination the villagers have to help themselves, to push for change within their close community. I felt honoured to have had the opportunity to work alongside them and empowered by their determination and enthusiasm to make their world a better place to live in.

Back in the bus, we were driven to two huge two-storey shells of buildings, just steel girder frames, which will eventually be a training centre for the villagers to be taught constructions skills. Here we were offered a welcome cold drink and snacks whilst we watched a video showing how the Mziki Project was first started by Peter Cornelius as an ‘idea’ in 1997.

It took another 14yrs to get the infrastructure to support over 200 houses before he met with Habitat for Humanity and shared his dream of creating a model that is so very unique and now quite established that other communities can use the Project as a template.

Then it was back to ‘Kings Grant’ for a lovely hot meal and a good night’s sleep.

Tomorrow….it’s a flight to Phinda to stay at Phinda Private Game Reserve’s beautiful Mountain Lodge and ….SAFARI!

Just to prove I did do some building…
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Meet Lalisile Dlamini one of the two beneficiaries for the houses the Challenge team are helping to build.

Lalisile is 38 years old and has three children, one son and two daughters (17, 11 and 7 years). All the children attend local schools.

Lalisile is married to Sutha Njwara and they currently live in a Kraal on the Highflats farm where the Mziki Agri village Project is based. The family currently live in a mud and wattle structure and their monthly income is very low. Conditions within the home are very difficult for the family, especially the children. Bad weather causes problems as the roof leaks and the children become sick very easily.

Lalisile was very excited when volunteers came previously to help families build their homes and she has been looking forward to meeting the volunteers and building with them.

Interview by: Ben TshiteyaVoluneer Co-ordinator Habitat for Humanity SA (KZN Region)

NOW READ ABOUT THOLAKELE….

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