Ward 2 Development Forum

Sam: The Promise

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10 min read

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

What could each party promise, what does each need, and which needs has nobody met?

You are the Weaver. On the class poster you put a flag for each organisation, in the colour of the TIME corner the class chose in the Four Corners game. In class you run the promise round. In the plan you write Part 7: Who promises what, and you lead the whole class in Part 8: Before we start.

What a commitment pool is

You know Commitment Pooling from Term 3. People and organisations make promises to each other and hold those promises together. Everyone draws from the pool by taking part.

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

  • Community-size pools are very old. Mweria on the Kenyan coast, and Letsema and Ilima in southern Africa, are examples. The wiki reads them as T-form, the Tribes form of TIME.

  • Bioregional pools join many parties. They pool promises such as clearing, restoring and monitoring into one service that an outside buyer can pay for. The Greater Cape Town Water Fund and the bond work at this size.

  • The wiki’s idea is that the valley could join the two sizes. The community would hold its promises as its own asset and sign the contract as one of the parties. Nobody has tried it here.

  • A party can promise only what it controls. A need is a request. It turns into a promise when another party says yes.

The four questions to ask of every promise

  1. Does it belong in the pool? (Curation)
  2. What is it worth to the others? (Valuation)
  3. Can the party keep it without breaking another promise? (Limitation)
  4. Who receives it, and what do they give back? (Exchange)

The open questions nobody has answered yet. Your list will grow.

  1. Would the dam’s operators count the valley’s water?
  2. How much water would restoration add, and where and when would it arrive?
  3. Which law could allow it?
  4. What do the Transformasie Komitee and the Moravian Church say about Farm 39 and Langgezocht (Farm 32)?
  5. Would the bond’s organisers, the City of Cape Town or WWF be interested?

All five are red-thread questions.

Words to use:

  • commitment (a promise to do something),
  • pool (a shared store that everyone can add to and draw from),
  • party (a person or group that takes part in an agreement),
  • need (something a party must have before a plan can go ahead).

Think of Europe

Traders on a river route needed to trust each other for months at a time. What promises held them together? How is that like a pool? 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: Who would have to promise something for your leaky dam to work, and what would each one need?
  • 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 your flags (40 minutes). From the Four Corners game, list the organisations the class placed and the corner each went to. Choose one colour for each corner: T, I, M and E. On a rough drawing of the valley, put a small flag where each organisation works. Organisations from outside the valley go in a box at the edge. Ask a grown-up to help you find the places.
  2. Count the corners (10 minutes). Which colour has the most flags? Which has the fewest? Write one sentence about it.
  3. Field Book page 2 (30 minutes). Draw the Four Corners as the class left them. 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. Promise cards (40 minutes). Make one card for each part of the plan, Parts 1 to 6. On each, write “For this part, someone must promise …” and “This part needs …”. Guess from what your classmates said in class. Use a red thread. You will check them with the class in the promise round.
  3. Family test (20 minutes). Give three of the cards to people in your family. Each person plays a party. Ask the four questions of each promise. Can they keep it without breaking another?

Tell

  1. Tell it back (10 minutes). Tell your family which promise was hardest to keep, and why. Then show them your leaky dam site and the activities you would offer.

Think

  1. 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”. Write your own card for Part 7. Then start the list for Part 8, “Before we start”. Begin with the open questions above and add any need your family test showed nobody could meet.

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

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

Think

  1. Field Book page 4 (40 minutes). Draw the promise round as a web, with every unmet need in red. Add three facts, each with a thread.
  2. 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. Hold the wool web from the promise round while you tell, then read Part 8 with the whole class. Practise it aloud at least four times, without notes on the last two.

Tell

  1. 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

  1. 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.

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