The idea for this project came to me after spending 3 months in Cape Town in 2018, working for a charity that was raising awareness on plastic pollution in our oceans and volunteering in SANCCOB by saving sick and injured penguins. With my own eyes I saw terrible effects that plastic has on our oceans, I saw penguins being entangled and suffocated by it, we were finding pieces of plastic inside penguins’ stomachs, I saw many of them dying on my arms. This was when I knew I had to do something about it. I was dreaming about organizing my own volunteer project where I would be able to take people on board and work together towards making our planet better and cleaner.

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After almost a year of preparation, finding the right team and getting sponsorship from Keen Europe and PayPal, I took a group of 7 

volunteers to Durban, South Africa, where for a month we were cleaning beaches and riverbanks in the area, raising awareness on plastic pollution thought content creation, building new facilities in a local Monkey sanctuary with eco-bricks thought repurposing the plastic waste 

and doing outreach in local townships to teach locals how to turn their waste into building materials.

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In just a month time this is a list of things that we have done and I couldn't be more proud of all of us:

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• We did 5 beach clean ups

• Collected over 80 bags of plastic

• Did 4 educational sessions about plastic pollution to over 150 local people

• Taught adults and kids to make ecobricks

• Created tons of environmental photo and video content that by now has already been seen by millions and this is only the start.

• Collaborated with a local school, continued their mission and gave their ecobricks new life in a form of 3 bins that will now be placed in @saasa_monkeylandkzn along with information sign about plastic pollution

• Made 157 ecobricks

• 112 of them we used to build 3 chairs and a table that will be used for kids to play in the monkey sanctuary

• Build shelves, compost bin, made art for MonkeyLand

• Visited recycling plant, learned more about waste management, visited local environmental projects Litterboom!

• And of course, had tons of fun along the way, grew and became better humans!