“Please sms ’CCLA‘ to 34747”, the affable Simon Gear, Talk Radio 702 presenter and MC at the recent Climate Change Leadership Awards (CCLA) evening, boomed over the microphone.

The audience at the Sandton Sun, the who’s-who of corporate South Africa’s green cognoscenti, fiddled with their cell phones. Clearly for more than one executive this was a first on their latest Blackberry or iPhone. Soon over half of the audience had negotiated their way through a CCLA branded survey on a mobi site and could focus again on a choice panel of guest speakers, meet CCLA sponsors, including the SA Post Office, Pick n Pay and Primedia, and cheer on an impressive array of the Climate Leaders and Heroes of South Africa.

“We are also happy to acknowledge the innovative work amaNeutral’s Jan and Perri Grobler have done to champion this cutting-edge technology and build our fund raising mobi. We look forward to seeing many South Africans calculate and offset their carbon footprint on mytrees.mobi”, elaborates Jeunesse.

 “Mobile surveys are an exciting and obvious use for this type of real-time and self-help applications”, said Raymond Buckle, CEO of SilverstoneCIS and the mobile technology enabler at the event. “There were 160 responses and 73 fully completed surveys, out of an audience of 260 people, not bad for the calibre of guests and the fact that most of them have probably never engaged with anything like this on their phones before.”

Convener of the panel of judges and respected green advocate, Kevin James from Global Carbon Exchange, confirms, “The speed, ease-of-use, accuracy and response rates met our expectations. We’ll definitely use this method of data-gathering again to streamline carbon footprint reporting and enhance the experience for event-goers.”

 As always an incentive helps and this time it was self-acknowledged technophobe Setlogane Machidi, head of Investec’s CSI team, who won the coveted weekend-for-two at the beautiful Shamwari Resort. “It was so easy! Now even I know how short codes work and how handy it is to access the internet on your phone…even in Shamwari!”, quips a beaming Setlogane.

In the end all agreed that events like the Climate Change Leadership Awards provide a much needed opportunity to learn from and reward the selfless and creative efforts of those who are leading the fight against environmental degradation and climate change. It was also a change to take things up a notch and recommit to carbon neutrality and give money, time and enthusiasm to committed causes like Food & Trees for Africa.