WEDNESDAY, 22 FEBRUARY 2006: With just two months to go before government adopts a National Strategy for Sustainable Development, the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism will tonight launch a “ My Strategy” campaign to be popularly known as the NSSD Youth, Art & Essay Challenge. The challenge forms part of an awareness raising campaign about the strategy and is targeted at school children, high school students and youth who are required to express their understanding of the sustainable development in a creative format through an essay, a business plan or in a visual artistic expression.

The need for governments to develop a National Strategy for Sustainable Development is one of the milestone targets agreed to at the Johannesburg Worlds Summit held in South Africa in 2002 and reaffirmed at the 5-year review of the Millennium Summit held in New York in 2005.

Whilst acknowledging that government had taken too long to develop the strategy, Mr Blessing Manale, Director for Sustainable Development Cooperation at DEAT, said that “ South Africa’s key strategic framework for development, the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP), included many elements of sustainability, within the context of addressing the inequalities of apartheid and the NSSD will build on that and other major policies and initiatives currently unfolding”

The Deputy Minister for Environmental Affairs and Tourism, Ms Rejoice Mabudafhasi said, “This Challenge is an extension of work commenced when the World Summit on Sustainable Development held here back in 2002 and is aimed at engaging our youth to be participants and not just recipients of the outcomes of sustainable development.”

The Challenge is divided into three categories targeting lower grade school children, high school students and youth and youth organisations and has received financial support from the Danish Government through its foreign development agency – DANIDA.

The campaign runs from February to April 2006 and will result with the winning categories receiving a total pool prize of R100 000 towards their own studies, their schools and their community youth projects

Ms Mabudafhasi concluded that, “We are satisfied that through conscientising our youth about matters relating to sustainable development they will grow up to be sensitive creating a balance between human and environmental needs.”