By: Ayanda Kasule

The South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) has taken the first step in caring for the environment by launching the earth ambassador initiative this week.

e-Ball, with the ‘e’ standing for earth, environmental or educational, is an initiative which is driven by the e-ball made out of waste materials such as plastic, covered with leather and pinned with stars.

“This is a labour intensive project, which will be training as many people to manufacture balls and create green jobs,” said Mike Baker. “If people could sponsor one star and be part of this great initiative, the more stars we have, the more people will be committed to the community and environment

.”A minimum of 15 000 e-balls will be dispersed across the globe and will be used as a platform to motivate young stars to collect waste material.

The earth ambassador is aimed at grooming young South African’s aged 18-25 from the townships, to be leaders that will champion environmental and community issues.

Moetetsi Khoahli, chief officer of SANBI said, “These earth ambassadors will be bused to our national botanical gardens to experience the importance of biodiversity in relation to the health of our earth.”

Ebirth Adams Event Manager and co-founder of e-ball

Over one hundred young stars will be selected to undergo a seven-day adventure environmental training program to a secret destination and later that number is set to be reduced to a final 16.

The 16 will travel to four environmental hot spots around the world with various individuals such as Peter an Kets, who travelled across the Atlantic Oceans, Rambol Huber, who ran across the Great Wall of China and Riaan Manser, first person to circumnavigate the coast of Africa by bicycle.

SANBI is an active partner with the earth program and is determined that “the initiative has the potential to reach millions of people around the world. Engender sound environmental consideration, a sense of community and it will provide a focus on adventure tourism in South Africa.”