Jody Scheckter, South Africa's only ever Formula 1 champion, is sponsoring 11 000 trees for the Greening of Soweto towards 2010 project. Together with Talk Radio 702, the City of Johannesburg and Johannesburg City Parks, Jody handed over 500 of these trees to residents of Soweto on 1 September 2007. This event also marked the start of Arbor Week 2007. Talk Radio 702 and Johannesburg City Parks sponsored the handover function and 100 VIPs and 500 community members attended. Jody Scheckter, Mayor Amos Masondo, Councilor for the Environment in Gauteng, Prema Naidoo, Mrs Winnie Madikizela Mandela, Miss Earth SA and finalists, Keith Kirsten, Pheladi Gwangwa and other 702 exectives and DJs, City Parks executives and many others joined the residents of wards 36, 44 and 45 to celebrate Arbor Week and the Greening of Soweto through Jody's generous support of Food & Trees for Africa.

This took place through the award winning Trees for Homes programme. The Soweto Greening Project aims to plant hundreds of thousands of trees in Soweto in time for the 2010 FIFA Soccer World Cup. “For the past two years, Talk Radio 702 has been involved in greening projects aimed at uplifting previously disadvantaged communities and encouraging people to become self-sufficient,” said Talk Radio 702 station manager, Pheladi Gwangwa. “In 2005 we handed 702 trees to the community of Soweto and last year donated the same amount to the community of Ivory Park in Midrand. This year we decided to get involved in the Soweto Greening Project.” The project came about after South Africa’s greening organisation, Food & Trees for Africa (FTFA), was approached to help raise funds and implement its award winning Trees for Homes programme in Soweto. The Soweto Green project’s key goals are to distribute 200 000 fruit and indigenous trees to 200 000 Sowetan homeowners, as well as train unemployed community members who become community based educators (CBEs), and provide them with short-term employment. For every 500 trees FTFA (together with the local stakeholders) identifies and trains 10 CBEs who are employed part-time for up to three months to spread awareness of the programme, the need for clean and green neighbourhoods, and the many benefits that trees have, including their role in mitigating climate change. “Climate change is arguably the most crucial issue of our time and is the biggest environmental challenge that we face. While many of us agree that we must do something, it seems too vast a problem for any one of us to tackle,” said Jeunesse Park, CEO of FTFA. “Early last year FTFA launched the Carbon Standard – the first South African carbon calculator, which facilitates the measurement of carbon footprints and equates this to the number of trees needed to offset these emissions. “The Carbon Standard has since helped to make it easy and affordable for government, individuals and corporations to offset carbon emissions by planting trees as they provide us with the air we breathe and absorb the carbon dioxide we exhale.” FTFA has the backing of several large organisations, government officials, as well as prominent personalities. Formula One champion, Jody Scheckter, said he decided to get involved with FTFA because it touched on two points he believed were of great importance. “Teaching people how to grow their own food encourages long-term sustainability, which in turn, empowers local communities. This way they don’t have to rely on the occasional food parcel to survive,” said Scheckter. “There is also something very rewarding about picking and eating fruit or vegetable grown in your own garden, and every tree that is planted helps the environment.” Johannesburg City Parks – the greening entity in the City of Johannesburg – aims to plant 100 000 trees in parks and public spaces and is accelerating greening programmes in its bid to build a more healthy and vibrant environment in Johannesburg. “Programmes such as the Soweto Greening Project and the Tree-by-Tree greening initiative, are aimed at resolving greening imbalances in new and developing suburbs,” said the Member of Mayoral Committee for Environment in the City of Johannesburg, Councillor Prema Naidoo. “Greening our city is a shared responsibility. So many of our areas are rich in heritage and culture and yet poor in environment and in health. Johannesburg City Parks and its greening partners will observe National Arbor Week by partnering schools, communities and the private sector in various tree planting ceremonies and use the week as a platform to highlight the importance of growing and nurturing our natural environment.”