Dear Earthkeeper,
Welcome to the October edition of our newsletter which is filled with news and activities from recent months. We hope you will enjoy reading it and continue showing us your highly appreciated love and support.
As we head towards the end of the year, we are excited to share our latest news, blog posts, highlights, and upcoming events where we hope you will join us.
In this last quarter, we held a number of events and campaigns with faith leaders, such as an in-person Faith Leader Environmental Advocacy Training (FLEAT) in Zambia, Nuclear Free South Africa vigils, Cage-Free advocacy as well as the Food and Climate Justice #Faiths4SustainableFarming campaign.
Our Virtual Annual General Meeting (AGM) was held on 18 August 2022. We were thrilled to have Vandana Shiva as our keynote speaker. If you missed her inspiring contribution, you can watch it here or read it here.
We hope all our Jewish Friends had a blessed Yom Kippur and wishing you a joyful Sukkot. We wish all of our Hindu friends a happy Diwali and those who are celebrating a very happy Karwa Chauth.
Please don't forget to follow us on social media for daily news and updates. ( Facebook, Instagram and Twitter).
Peace and blessings,
The SAFCEI Team
New at SAFCEI
Tara van Ryneveld joined our team in September as the new Climate Policy Coordinator, working on the Rural Action for Climate Resilience project. Tara recently completed her masters on climate justice in Sweden. SAFCEI partners with SCAT and HBS supporting rural community-based organisations and faith leaders to build social, economic and environmental resilience to climate change.
 Zwelisha Shobede joined SAFCEI in August as the new Cage-Free C ampaign Coordinator. Zwelisha has a marketing background and hails from KZN. His work entails engaging faith leaders and achieving pledges from corporations on the Cage-free campaign, to ensure cages for hens are a thing of the past .
 Judy-Rose Cyster joined our team in August as our Junior Administrator. Judy is a faith leader herself, so has deep links into her own community and our faith leader network, she provides administrative support to the office including logistics, data collection and procurement .
Latest news
Energy and Climate Justice
Energy continues to be a hot topic in our region, with load shedding plaguing people living in South Africa and other countries. After another unfair and exorbitant tarriff increase request of 38.10% for 2023/24, we sent in objections to the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (NERSA). We are seeing double digit increases year on year, far above inflation and what most people can afford. The lack of reliability of Eskom’s fleet and its huge debt burden, make this a bigger and bigger problem for electricity consumers each year. Read our submission and press release here.
On 31 August and 29 September 2022, we held vigils outside of Parliament, calling for an #EnergyPlan4All by raising awareness that we don't want or need nuclear energy in Africa, which is a part of the crisis in energy planning.
Join us in person or virtually online as we continue to vigil monthly, email wayne@safcei.org.za for more information.
On 24 September 2022, we joined youth and other members of civil society in Cape Town CBD at the March for System Change, demanding action from the government for the rights and wellbeing of people and the planet.
FLEAT
From 13 - 15 September 2022, we hosted our first inperson FLEAT workshop in Zambia. The workshop was attended 17 faith leaders from Christian and Muslim faiths.
The group spent the three days of the workshop learning about Energy and Climate Justice, Food and Climate Justice, eco-footprinting, and agroecological techniques. A focus was to learn about indigenous foods, and learning and sharing about the health benefits of many plants. A field trip to an agroecological farm that supplies airlines, hospitals and supermarkets with fresh fruit and vegetables inspired us. Faith leaders were galvanised by the natural way of farming and the benefits it has on the earth.
Food and Climate Justice
On 1st September, the start of Season of Creation, we launched our #Faiths4SustainableFarming campaign that will run until World Food Day (16 October 2022). We are sharing videos of faith leaders on social media and campaign activities including a global Our Africa, Our Agriculture press conference attended by 100 journalists and a Twitter storm, Agroecology workshop where participants learned the benefits of agroecological farming and more.
We also attended the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa's (AFSA) conference in Ethiopia on Africa's roadmap to adaption through #Agroecology: Defining Africa's position for #COP27, where African civil society in 32 countries called for COP27 to place agroecology at the centre of climate adaptation, creating resilience for small farmers, fishermen, pastors, indigenous communities and their ali systems.
Cage-Free campaign
In September, we celebrated two major global victories for hens. Nando's made a commitment to use 100% cage-free eggs worldwide.
While Nando's restaurants in the UK and Ireland already use cage-free eggs, they will also move to 100% cage-free eggs in New Zealand and Australia by 2023; North America and South Africa by 2025; and Malaysia and Singapore by 2027. Read more on this global victory here.
Toridoll also published a commitment to end cages in its global operations, except for Japan, by 2030. Read more on this commitment here.
SAFCEI is supporting the Open Wing Alliance (OWA) to host its African Regional Summit in Cape Town from 29 November 2022 to1 December 2022. Partners within the continent will meet and discuss challenges and possible solutions around the cage free campaign and also highlight successes over the past year.
Click here to sign up to the Earthkeepers' Fast Action Network and help end cages. Click here to view the latest #CageFree campaign updates. Click here to take action via the OWA Action App.
Safcei represented at events in Sweden and Germany
In September, our Executive Director, Francesca de Gasparis was invited to Scandavia's largest book fair by our partner ACT Church of Sweden to participate in panel talks at the Global square The first seminar was a discussion on Economical and Ecological Justice and the second seminar was on Faith and Equality can contribute to climate justice.
Francesca was also at Uppsala where she met young activists and engaged in conversations of power structures and youth inclusion. She participated in panel discussions and helped create a light demonstration for peace and also got to learn about the views of young people when it comes to climate change.
Rural Action For Climate Resilience
The Rural Action for Climate Resilience project has sent its comments on the First Draft Implementation Plan for the Western Cape Climate Change Response Strategy: Vision 2050 to the Department of Environmental Affairs and Development Planning.
Among other issues, we have noticed that the strategy lacked consideration of overlapping vulnerabilities to climate change and did not actively include rural voices, lacked commitments and urgency in addressing climate adaptation, and did not prioritise actions for those most vulnerable in informal settlements.
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