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Yacht sets overland course for AIDS awareness
Gudrun Heckl. The Mercury, 28 August 2002. Reprinted courtesy of Independent Newspapers (Pty) Ltd.
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Robert Swan has crossed both poles on foot and hasn't stopped walking the extra mile for the environment ever since.
After one epic voyage, he engaged a group of 200 young people from 70 nations to clear years of accumulated scientific junk from the Antarctic.
That project ended in January this year when his expedition yacht, 2041, docked in Cape Town. Still, his concern for the environment drove him on to continue addressing sustainability issues ahead of the World Summit on Sustainable Development.
So he was soon on to his next project, a co-operative one with loveLife. Yacht 2041 was hoisted on to the back of a huge truck and its next epic voyage began, this time on land, promoting HIV/AIDS awareness around South Africa.
His boat has now travelled through 70 towns on a 12 800km journey that has directly reached 11 600 people.
He believes there can be no sustainable development in South Africa without addressing issues such as the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
"No one is inspired by the negative," Swan said at the Ice Station in the Ubuntu Village on Wednesday. "The problem is not the lack of information, it's the lack of inspiration."
"Most people are not stupid; they can see the huge changes going on in our world - the floods, climate records broken year on year - but they are such big issues and so frightening that people become confused, discouraged or just switch off.
"Our job is to inspire them - to get them to believe that change is possible with small, positive steps." |
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