1. The Western Cape Education Department (WCED) endeavours to respond to the increasingly acute water crisis facing our province. Our big dams are running dry.
2. El Nino and La Nina are events that have a warming or cooling effect on the Eastern Pacific Ocean and impact rainfall. South Africa is currently recovering from the El Nino effect which caused a drought that ravaged most parts of the country, leaving farmers with millions of rands in losses.
3. According to reports less rain has fallen last year than at any other time in the past 112 years, it will take between three to four years for dams to refill to acceptable levels.
4. We call on our schools, learners and communities to engage in curriculum-aligned activities across subjects to mobilise in order to protect our precious, life-giving water resource. We must meet future needs for water conservation, water demand management and food security.
5. In pursuit of the goal to improve learner knowledge of the ever-worsening water shortage, thereby promoting social activism, the WCED would like to encourage all schools to use the suggested guidelines and allow teachers and learners to explore innovative strategies for intervention.
6. The annexure provides guidelines for the different subjects. We would like all schools to include these guidelines in their curriculum practices.
7. Principals are requested to bring the content of this minute to the attention of all subject teachers.


SIGNED: PAD BEETS
DEPUTY DIRECTOR-GENERAL: CURRICULUM AND ASSESSMENT MANAGEMENT
DATE: 2017:01:30

Annexure: Awareness of critical water shortage  (size: 60 KB)