The Roots Driven Rural Development Community Engagement project of the Unisa Department of Geography and the Greater Rustenburg Community Forum was so to speak “placed on the map” on 8 March 2013 when a regional round of the International Barbara Petchenik children’s map drawing competition was held at the Thlolego Ecovillage. The Barbara Petchenik Award was created by the International Cartographic Association in 1993 in honour of a past Vice president of the ICA and cartographer who worked through her life with maps related to children. The international competition takes place every two years according to a predetermined theme. The theme of the 2013 competition is: My place in today’s world (This will also be the theme for the 2015 competition).
The meaning of the theme of the competition was enhanced by the location of the round of the competition, at the ecovillage. According to the website (http://gen.ecovillage.org/) “Thlolego is a small rural-based living and learning community that offers certification courses in permaculture, sustainable building technology, and ecovillage design incorporating local African traditions. In order to respond to the growing challenge of prosperity and poverty living side by side, programmes are being developed to train trainers in science, solar technology, biology, sanitation, herbals, ecology and household food security. “ This is indeed a very interesting place in today’s world and the maps from rural schools make a valuable unique contribution to the variety of perspectives of children from different contexts.
The aims of the competition were certainly met as we received many creative representations of the world; and cartographic awareness and consciousness of their environment were enhanced. We were honored in that Prof Elri Liebenberg, former head of the Department of Geography at Unisa , and the national coordinator of the map drawing competition could join us for the event.
Melanie Nicolau, currently the head of the Geography Department at Unisa, created a fun mapping exercise with the learners. They were divided in four groups, named Africa, America, Asia and Europe. With the assistance of facilitators they firstly had to find their continent on a globe and a flat map of the world and then identify a country and city on their continent. They had to share with the bigger group their answers and also indicate what is special about their continent – of course Africa has the “big five” and other animals, friendly people and the Amarula tree.
Anna de Jager from the Geography Department at Unisa shared some technical background on the importance of maps after which the prizes of the categories were handed out by Bonolo and Alma from the CRCF. Learners who attended the event not only had much fun, they also learnt a lot and could go home with a beautiful T-shirt with a printed image of one of the entries of a previous competition. Six maps will eventually be selected to represent South Africa at the ICA International Cartographic Conference in Dresden, Germany where an international winner will be selected in each category. More information about the competition can be found on their website (http://icaci.org)
 |
 |
 |
Author: Anna de Jager, Department of Geography
