Out of the box thinking to save our rhinos?

Over 1000 rhinos were slaughtered in South Africa last year. So far in 2014, the figure stands at nearly 500. Here is an innovative idea which could help….

A young South-African entrepreneur has been recognised by Google for using game technology and YouTube videos to prevent high-school boys from considering rhino poaching as a viable career option.

Mbekezeli Khumalo, 26, from Soweto is co-creator of Trees and Rhinos, a video and soon-to-be game.

Khumalo is one of 20 semi-finalists in the Africa Connected Campaign, an initiative by Google aimed at innovative, entrepreneurial web adopters from across sub-Saharan Africa who have used the web to overcome challenges, transform their work and the lives of others.

The semi-finalists were selected from more than 2 200 entries from 35 countries. Five overall winners will each receive $25 000 (R260 000) and six months mentorship from a Google sponsor.

Khumalo is the team leader for BoxworM, a company that aims to fix everyday problems using technology and help re-position industries in this “new tech era”.

BoxworM was started when Khumalo and co-founders were at university. Their first project was an e-learning solution they developed for their classmates to help out with a subject everyone was having trouble with.

The company has been around for three years and Khumalo said last year they decided to challenge themselves to conceptualise a solution to tackle rhino-poaching using technology.

“I started seeing people driving around in their cars with the little red horn on the front. We asked around to try to figure out what that was all about and it was then that the rhino crisis really became apparent to us,” he said.

After research, they came up with Trees and Rhinos, which uses and illustrates the latest anti-poaching technology.

Khumalo, who studied quantity surveying at Wits university, said he could not disclose how the game worked entirely as it may alert poachers to new anti-poaching technology.

The game will be free.

“We aim to use the game to teach children who go to school near game reserves across South Africa about rhino conservation,” said Khumalo.

“We are doing this because while we were conducting our research we found out that the kids in those schools, specifically in matric, are starting to look at poaching as a profitable career option! We think this is devastating and this game is a great way to combat that.”

Khumalo said the game would be similar to Mario Brothers.

“It will have a story line where the player is a baby rhino that is separated from its mother. The player must work through the game and obstacles to find its mother.”

The game will be in 2D because it can be downloaded and played on even the most basic colour wap phones.

“There is no need for fancy phones to play or download it. That is important to us as the kids who we want to play this game live in impoverished areas.”

Text taken from:

http://www.4-traders.com/GOOGLE-INC-C-16118013/news/GOOGLE-C–Game-on-for-hi-tech-rhino-saving-18476079/

Follow Mbekezeli Khumalo’s intriguing venture on:

https://twitter.com/boxworMofficial

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSQynOyuOdo

 

Let’s break down our walls and build a community

Visitors to South African residential suburbs are often appalled at the sight of high walls, electric fencing and other security devices which surround many of our homes. They see it as divisive and quite the opposite of what residential communities should be doing in order to be communities.

But then, this has been our response to the high levels of crime in the country.  And as crime has increased, so we have added more and more devices – alarms and walls, then electric fences, beams, cameras, etc. etc.  Sounds like paranoia? Well yes. We have withdrawn into our own little fortresses, to the extent that many of us don’t know our neighbours, or even talk to them!

Worse still, we turn our backs on the police and employ private security companies who in turn provide us with a service called ‘armed response’ – a service which seems to give us some comfort. This is an illusion of comfort, of course, because most ‘armed response’ comes in reaction to the activation of our intruder alarms – in other words, after the crime or break-in has taken place. Is that real and lasting comfort, or even a solution?

It is true that the South African police have their shortcomings. They lack resources and manpower, are prone to insufficient training and suffer from low morale. So it is quite understandable that private security companies have successfully filled the perceived void in effective policing. (What we pay for private security in South Africa, exceeds the entire national police budget.)

Recently however, many citizens have realised the shortcomings of ‘reactive’ policing and are now beginning to operate effective neighbourhood watches and citizen patrols in their efforts to protect themselves from increasingly violent criminals. There is a realization that we all have a part to play.

A real success story is that of a scheme in our suburb in Johannesburg, which after five years is now proving its worth in crime prevention and better still, in community building. Such has been its effectiveness that more than 60 percent of households in our suburb are members of the scheme.

Known as SafeParkview the scheme provides 24 hour, seven days a week patrols by three vehicles, each manned by two high level security guards, who have been briefed by us, the residents, to operate like policemen in keeping criminals at bay. Where the South African police are unable to provide us with a regular, effective presence on our streets, SafeParkview , with the full co-operation of our local police station (the South African Police Service), has given us streets that are safe to walk in and almost entirely free of dangerous criminals.

The best part is that the patrollers, their co-ordinators and their undercover intelligence network, all report to us, the residents. And yes, they will respond within minutes to our alarm activations and they will escort us home at night if we should need them to.

It doesn’t stop there, because we have recently enhanced the scheme to include many service providers such as builders, plumbers, electricians, gardeners and the like. And we now have a register of many such service providers who have committed themselves to preventing crime and being an active part of our community when they are working in the suburb.

The upshot of this is that many of us now interact more readily with our neighbours and actively look out for each other.  We share crime intelligence and criminal lookouts and we encourage each other to employ service providers of good repute and those who contribute to the safety of our community.

This surely marks the start of real community building.

What’s next?

Well, perhaps we can start breaking down our walls and electric fences, sure in the knowledge that we stand together against crime and that criminals are not welcome on our streets.

NGOs unite!

I met a lawyer the other day who suggested that we are all to pre-occupied with governments and politicians. We give them far to much credence for what the they do NOT do, even though they spend a lot of time telling us what they (think) they actually do.

She (the lawyer) reminded me that hundreds of non government organisations (NGOs) actually do their work, often selflessly, but certainly effectively – for people at the ground level. And this they do, in spite of what governments and politicians say or (don’t) do.

She went on to suggest that if all NGOs got together, they (we) could run the country. Now, there’s an inspiring thought….