Evan: The Bond (Follow the Money)

This is your own page for the Water for the Valley project. Your tasks for every week to the end of the project are on this page.

You may use an AI helper. Copy and paste this link into the chat: https://df.valleyofgrace.co.za/cultural/education/project/llms.txt. It can check a fact or explain a hard word. Your Field Book, your map layer and your plan card are yours to make.

To see what the whole class is making, see Water for the Valley: Your Term 4 Project.

What changed on 26 October

We won’t be writing letters or holding a panel. If you started a letter, keep it in your Field Book. The class now makes two things together: a Valley Map, as one combined poster we work on in class, and a short Valley Water Plan. You keep your theme. You add one layer to the map and write one part of the plan.

Your question

Who might pay for the water our valley holds, and how much of the money would stay in the valley?

You and Ayden share The Bond. Evan, you follow the money. On the class poster you paint the money road in gold along the edge, flowing the opposite way to the water. In the plan you write Part 5: Where the money comes from.

Facts to stamp

Choose three of these for your Field Book. Tie the correct colour thread to each one.

• [IC] - Blue

• [MS] - Yellow

• [TBV] - Red

• A bond is a loan. A bank or a government borrows money from many investors and promises to pay it back with extra.

• The Cape Water Performance-Based Bond was listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange on 17 April 2026. It is worth R2.5 billion and was issued by FirstRand Bank.

• Part of what the bond pays investors depends on checked results from clearing invasive plants in Cape Town’s mountain catchments.

• Rand Merchant Bank put the bond together. Three big investors joined first: the International Finance Corporation, FSD Africa Investments and Aluwani Capital Partners.

• The Nature Conservancy South Africa does the restoration work. It passes about USD 8.8 million over five years to the Greater Cape Town Water Fund.

• The Water Fund says clearing 54,300 hectares in seven mountain catchments would add 55 billion litres of water a year within six years, at about a tenth of what desalination costs for each litre.

• Nobody has asked the bond’s organisers whether work in our valley could count.

Words to use:

• investor (someone who lends money hoping to earn more back),
• issuer (the bank that creates the bond and sells it),
• performance-based (the payment depends on a result that is measured),
• desalination (taking salt out of seawater).

Two more places money could come from

We talked about these in class. The bond is one way money might reach the valley. Here are two others. Stamp these facts too.

1. A family office. A family office looks after the money of one very rich family, and often the money that family gives away. In South Africa one example is the Rupert family.

• Anton Rupert helped start the organisation that became WWF South Africa, in 1968.
• The Rupert family has given money to nature and conservation for many years.
• A Rupert family foundation could pay for work that holds water in our valley.
• Nobody has asked the Rupert family whether it would fund work in our valley.

2. The Western Cape Government. The Province has a long plan for roads, water, power and buildings up to the year 2050. It is called the Western Cape Infrastructure Framework 2050.

• The plan’s list of projects includes an “Overberg Dam”, described as a potential water security project in the Overberg District.
• The Overberg Dam could be built somewhere near Swellendam.
• Our valley could offer to store extra water in its land and streams, and ask for some of the money planned for water in the Overberg.
• Nobody has asked the Western Cape Government whether the valley’s water could count.

More words to use:

• family office (a team that looks after one rich family’s money),
• foundation (an organisation that gives money away for a purpose),
• infrastructure (the big things a place needs to work, such as roads, pipes, dams and power lines),
• water security (having enough safe water, even in a drought).

Think of Europe

Traders on Europe’s rivers paid fees at certain places. Who got paid, and for what? Now think about our valley. When water flows from our mountains to the sea, who gets paid? Who should? Bring your answer from main lesson.

Your leaky dam

Everyone in the class does this in Week 3.

A gully is a deep channel that rushing rainwater has cut into a slope. A leaky dam is a low wall of stones, logs or packed branches built across a gully. When rain rushes down, the wall slows the water so it spreads out and soaks into the soil. Some water still leaks through, so the stream below keeps running. Gully stuffing means packing branches and brush into a gully so it catches soil and water. Branches cleared from pines and wattles can be used. Other small helpers are lines of stones laid across a slope, and plants along the banks to hold the soil.

You can also choose a flatter stretch of a river that a flood has damaged before. Floods tear up the banks and leave rocks scattered along the riverbed. Those rocks can be used to build the leaky dam wall, so the river slows down and spreads out there.

Find your site on Google Earth (25 minutes). With a grown-up, open the class map: https://earth.google.com/earth/d/1PejJJkRHA_WrwYwdKrSeea92u3q3vp9y?usp=sharing

1. Look at the slopes and rivers around Genadendal and Greyton. Zoom in until you can see single trees.
2. Find a gully, or a flood-damaged stretch of river. Gully clues: a dark or bare line running down a slope, a strip of green along it, or a fan of bare soil at the bottom where the water dropped what it carried. River clues: a flatter part of the river where the banks look torn or bare, and pale patches of rock and gravel spread along the riverbed.
3. Choose the spot where you would build your leaky dam.
4. Take a screenshot with your spot circled, or draw what you see. Hold your pointer on the spot and write down the numbers Google Earth shows at the bottom of the screen. Michael will use them to pin your site on the class map.

Plan around it (20 minutes). On one page, write or draw:

• why you chose this spot,
• what you would build around it, such as a path for visitors, a bench or lookout, a sign that explains how it works, a measuring post, or a nursery bed or vegetable garden below where the soil stays damp,
• what activities you would offer, such as guided walks, building days where visitors help stuff a gully, school field trips, birdwatching, or workshops that teach people to build leaky dams,
• your own theme question: Which of your activities could earn money, and who would pay for each one?
• one more way the valley could earn money, chosen from the list below.

Other ways the valley could earn. Each of these is an idea nobody has tested here, so give it a red thread.

• Growing vegetables for restaurants and guesthouses in Greyton
• A nursery selling young local plants for gardens and restoration work
• Selling firewood, poles and wood chips from cleared pines and wattles
• Making compost from cleared brush and garden waste
• Honey from bees kept near the fynbos
• Guided walks and hikes along restored streams
• Teaching days for schools and visitors
• A farm stall or Saturday market for valley produce
• Collecting seed from local plants for restoration projects
• Furniture and crafts made from cleared wood
• Paid work measuring rain and streams

Look on Google Earth only. Don’t build anything there just yet. Rivers are dangerous after rain, so never go to one without a grown-up. Many slopes belong to someone, so don’t write who owns the land.

This week: before the next session

About an hour and a half. This replaces the letter.

Do

1. Sketch the money road (40 minutes). On a long strip of paper, draw the river flowing from the dam down to the sea. Above it, draw the money road going the other way. Draw a box for each place money might come from, such as the bond, the City of Cape Town, or farmers downstream. Draw a box for each place it might be spent in the valley. Use solid arrows where you have a fact and dotted arrows where you are guessing.
2. Count your dotted arrows (10 minutes). Each dotted arrow is a question. Write the questions under your sketch.
3. Field Book page 2 (30 minutes). Draw the Bean Bond as you played it in class. Add three facts, each with a thread.

Week 3: Lay Out the Valley

A little over two hours. The leaky dam takes the extra time.

Do

1. Your leaky dam (45 minutes). Follow the steps in “Your leaky dam” above.
2. The valley purse (25 minutes). With a parent, list ways that holding more water could bring money into the valley. Some ideas: a fund or a bond paying for water, a family office such as the Rupert family’s, the Western Cape Government’s plans for water in the Overberg, wages for clearing teams, selling young plants from a nursery, farmers having more water in dry years, visitors coming for clean rivers. Give each one a thread. Most will be red.
3. Play it with beans (30 minutes). Put 20 beans in a bag. That is the money coming in. Pay beans out for what the money buys: wages, young plants, tools, measuring. Every bean paid to someone who lives in the valley goes in a valley bowl. Every bean paid to someone outside goes in an outside bowl. Count both bowls. Then try again and see if you can keep more beans in the valley. All numbers are pretend.

Tell

4. Tell it back (10 minutes). Show a grown-up your two bowls. Tell them what you changed to keep more beans in the valley. Then show them your leaky dam site and the activities you would offer.

Think

5. Your plan card in pencil (20 minutes). Fill in your plan card for your part. Start from your leaky dam: what you would build and the activities go under “What we would do” and “What it gives the valley”. For “What it gives the valley”, use your two bowls. For “What must be true first”, remember that nobody has asked the bond’s organisers whether work in our valley could count.

Your plan card has five lines, with a drawing at the top:

1. What we would do (one sentence)

2. Where (point to it on the map)

3. Who could do it (organisations get a red thread)

4. What it gives the valley (water, work, money, learning or care for the land)

5. What must be true first (your open questions, each with a red thread)

6. Field Book page 3 (10 minutes). Stick in your leaky dam screenshot or drawing. Add three facts, each with a thread.

Week 4: Hold the Water

About two hours.

Do

1. Your final plan card (50 minutes). Copy your plan card out in your best writing. Change anything the class or Sam’s promise round showed you. Paint or draw the picture at the top.

Tell

2. Tell it back (15 minutes). Read your card to a grown-up. Ask them which line is least clear, and fix it.

Think

3. Field Book page 4 (40 minutes). Draw the money road and the water road side by side, going opposite ways. Add three facts, each with a thread.
4. Think of Europe (15 minutes). Read your Europe answer again. Add one sentence about what it tells you about your part of the plan.

Week 5: Make the Plan

About two hours.

Do

1. Practise your part (60 minutes). You have about two minutes at the showing. Use your beans and the two bowls while you tell. Practise it aloud at least four times, without notes on the last two.

Tell

2. Tell it to your family (20 minutes). Show them your part as you will on the day. Ask them one thing they didn’t understand.

Think

3. Field Book page 5 (40 minutes). Draw the whole Valley Map from memory, as best you can, and mark your own layer. Add three facts, each with a thread.

Week 6: The showing

Your last Field Book page (30 minutes), after the showing. Draw the thing from this project you will remember longest. Under it, write the open questions from your part that nobody has answered yet. These are what we still don’t know.

Remember

• You don’t need to contact any organisation. Talk with your family and the adults at school.
• Write “could”, never “will”, about an organisation. Nobody has agreed to anything.
• This idea has not been discussed by the Forum yet. Keep what you find with your class and family.