A Soulful One

Kim Keiser loves rivers. They literally are her life and soul. She sees them as the veins and arteries of this earth. When they are blocked the planet is gearing itself up for a massive coronary combustion!

Her love for them led to her setting up The Soul Foundation, an organisation which aims to clean up the rivers, and protect their banks. To do so, Kim has developed a comprehensive waste management system, which involves local communities, and generates much needed employment. The jobs come in the form of setting up community recycling centres (currently there is only about 10% of recycling being done in Jo’burg).

Kim has already proven that it can be done. The Soul Foundation initiated a river clean up, which employed 144 people and removed 12,000 tones of waste from the Juskei River which runs through Jo’burg.

‘There are no ways we can save our rivers if we do not manage our waste’, says Kim. ‘So that is the first step- to get the waste into a proper system, because what is there at the moment is chaos’.

Kim has really thought through how that waste can be managed, and crucially takes into consideration the conditions within the townships and the cities. After nine year of planning, piloting, and evaluating the resuts, Kim is now gearing up to roll the model out.

There is a long way to go yet, but with her on board the earth may not need that by-pass after all.

tags: Rivers, Business, Africa, Social Entrepreneur, Environment, Foundation