This collaborative initiative demonstrates a shared commitment to environmental sustainability, community engagement, and creating a greener, healthier future for all.

The Alexander Water Warriors was founded to help clean up the highly polluted Jukskei River and promote Alexandra as an ecotourism destination. Meanwhile, UJ STH has long identified Alexandra as a site for regenerative tourism, recognising the potential to restore the environment while creating positive and lasting benefits for the local community.

Through these meaningful partnerships, all stakeholders are working towards a shared vision of environmental restoration, community empowerment, and sustainable tourism. By planting the trees, the volunteers did more than contribute to a greener environment — they planted seeds of hope for the people of Alexandra, nurturing the possibility of a cleaner, healthier, and more sustainable future for generations to come.

This initiative builds ASEZ's ongoing partnership with STH and the Faculty of College of Business and Economics (CBE) at UJ, while marking the beginning of a new chapter of collaboration with the Water Warriors. 

Paul Maluleke, Co-Founder of the Alexander Water Warriors, highlights the cultural and environmental significance of the Jukskei River to the Alexandra community, and also highlighted the importance of collaboration with various stakeholders in protecting and restoring the river and its surrounding environment.

"The Jukskei River is our heritage site. It's the only river we can pride ourselves on in Alex. We are so fortunate to have a river passing through our community in an urban space. We are working with universities, government entities, and so on, and this site is called the Discovery Site because is fully funded by Discovery Health," says Maluleke. 

Professor Nicola Wakelin from UJ expressed her gratitude to the volunteers for their participation in the tree-planting initiative, highlighting the importance of creating cleaner and safer environments to restore dignity and inspire hope within local communities.

"Thank you so much to each and everyone of you who came to assist us with the tree-planting. We need cleaner and safer environments to restore dignity and give hope to a community. So, I'm very grateful to everyone. And thank you, ASEZ, for bringing everyone together and helping us carry out this programme," adds Wakelin.

Thato Marolen, Founder and Managing Director of the Kula Marolen Foundation NPC in Alexandra, also joined the initiative and expresses her excitement about the programme and emphasises the need to raise greater awareness of such initiatives to encourage broader community participation. "I'm grateful for the invite and look forward to many more of these initiatives. I wish more awareness could be raised about these initiatives so that the whole community can partake," says Marolen.

ASEZ is a group of university student volunteers from the World Mission Society Church of God who act to solve practical problems around the world. The group organises events and activities to address pressing needs in communities around the world. As future leaders, ASEZ unites students, communities and governments to create real and lasting change through the SAVE Movement. The work of ASEZ takes place in more than 7 800 regions, in 178 different countries around the world. 

People are suffering from disasters such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, terrorist attacks, wars, and climate catastrophes caused by climate change. ASEZ believes all these challenges depend on young adults and university students who are the leaders of future generations, concludes ASEZ.

For more information, visit www.wmscog.com. You can also follow ASEZ on Facebook, X, or on Instagram.

*Image courtesy of contributor