De Duine represented on the JCC

Mariselle Stofberg
Shakira Strauss & Tuihongeni Haikola

The Junior City Council (JCC) is a body that appoints pupils with leadership qualities from local secondary schools to serve and act in the interest of the youth of Walvis Bay.

De Duine has four ambassadors on the council, two seniors and two juniors. The seniors are Júandro van Rooi (Public Relations Officer), Tuihongeni Haikola (Deputy Public Relations Officer) and the junior members are Lizaan Steenkamp and Morientez Izaacs.

The councillors said that being members of this body gave them the platform to advocate for all the youth members of Walvis Bay and not just a few. It gives them the opportunity to involve the youth in public matters and also be their voice of change. They stressed that being on the council can sometimes be quite a handful, since a lot is expected from them.

People have different perspectives of the JCC, and to clarify it isn’t just a body that works on beauty pageants, it actually does much more. The JCC is currently working on numerous newly introduced projects which includes the Book Collection project, where each school has to collect books, be it story books/reading books or writing books and the collected books will be handed over to a school which is not fully equipped with reading and writing materials. They will also be having a food drive which will be held on the 29th February 2020 and the food collected will be used for the soup kitchen in the Twaloloka Residential area.

The Miss Teen beauty pageant is the JCC’s biggest fundraiser which covers most of the costs for their charity projects. The LRC breakfast gives LRC’s from different high schools the platform to share their different ideas and come up with a project that will benefit the youth. They also have their annual Christmas project in front of the Civic centre, where families come together to sing along to joyous Christmas carols and the join the councillors in the countdown to switching on the Christmas lights.

The JCC will be working on a Hepatitis E Campaign which will be a joined project with the senior council. They are busy working on a sports tournament, colour festival and mental health awareness campaign with a local organisation.