by Joanna Tomkins, 3rd March 2025
The Ocean Pledge NPO, led by Diony Lalieu, gathered a group of eco warriors from Hout Bay’s Disa Primary last month at the iconic Boulders Beach San Parks nature reserve in Cape Town.
It was an honour to facilitate a workshop for these young pioneers from Disa Primary. Although they come from historically disadvantaged families, and facing or witnessing many social challenges in their communities, they have chosen to be with us today, with their monitors from Sentinel Ocean Alliance, who offer educational programmes for the children to learn about ocean conservation, and to nurture their connection to their natural environment.
Diony and I had created a programme that would satisfy their playfulness and at the same time allow them to ask some deep questions about their own relationship to their feelings about the extinction of species or overfishing, plastic pollution, etc…
To kick it off we went on an educational outing to visit the penguins in the Boulders colony in Simonstown and to be guided by a knowledgeable and passionate expert of SANCCOB, who told us how we could help the penguins avoid extinction. SANCCOB recently calculated that African Penguins, endemic to our coast in South Africa and Namibia, are threatened to go extinct by . The students got a chance to meet an inspiring conservation volunteer, as he answered all our questions about all the penguins’ behavioural facts and monitoring tools.
At the end of our tour Ocean Pledge then decided to ‘adopt’ a penguin on behalf of the kids, whereby they will provide enough funds for one individual rescue penguin to be monitored and cared for. Read more about this on SANCCOB’s page.
After that we went to the Boulders Beach nearby for a 60 minute workshop that we jointly facilitated, going around the spiral of the Work that Reconnects. I was impressed at the youth’s interest and capacity to focus and to open up about their feelings about our natural world. This was a highlight for me, as a facilitator of the WTR and I feel deeply grateful for this opportunity.
“In these times in which we live, our feelings of pain and inner suffering are so often undermined and even pathologised. We are told things like: ‘boys don’t cry’, to ‘pick up and carry on’, or to ‘eat a teaspoon of cement’- there is little space for tears. Daily we are overcome with messages around murders, wars, famine, injustice, devastating fires or storms, and, to deal with the barrage of destruction, some of us just switch off – feeling empty is better than feeling overwhelmed, right? Yet, the experience of this pain and suffering stems from a deep compassion and a shared connectivity with all beings. It is precisely in feeling this pain that we can release our fears so that we can make way for the desire to spark new life-sustaining realities.” This is an extract from the Chapter for Children and Teens of the book “Coming Back to Life” by Joanna Macy and Molly Young Brown.
“This deep reconnection to ourselves, our feelings and mother nature was the focus of our work today. After all, the most powerful speakers are the ones that speak from the heart 
“, said Diony Lalieu, director of the NPO Ocean Pledge, after our workshop on 1st February on Boulder Beach in Simonstown, Cape Town.
And she continues: “Based on work of deep ecologist, Joanna Macy, the students were guided through a 4-staged spiral starting with Gratitude; Honouring our Pain; Seeing the World with New Eyes and culminating in ‘Going Forth’, with an inspired vision of how we can all play our part in building back better.
“Thank you to Gaia Speaking and to our sponsors and partners for making this long-time dream come true.”They are the Sentinel Ocean Alliance and Mission Blue, in partnership with Plum Foundation, Naure Connects, the Table Mountain Fund and the Ocean Family Foundation. “
Gaia Speaking 