Durban salutes women of 2010

The Moses Mabhida Stadium has been completed and the King's Park Precinct that surrounds it aims to ensure that the venue is in use regularly and not only during big events. The Moses Mabhida Stadium Training Centre has trained local labourers in construction-related issues over the past two years, many of these are women.

Durban's beachfront is due for an upgrade offering residents and visitors more restaurants, more things to do and more venues for events.With improved lighting, CCTV coverage and other measures, the aim is to create places and spaces where women feel safe visiting alone or with children.

The Buffelsdraai Community Reforestation Project, which is part of the greening programme, aims to help protect the environment and make for a healthier city. Led by Nondumiso Shangse, the project employs a team of nine to run the plant nursery and build the new forest by planting and tending the trees.

The reforestation project also makes use of more than 200 ‘treepreneurs' from the Buffelsdraai and Osindisweni communities. Many of these treepreneurs are women - grandmothers and moms at home with young children - and they play a vital role in supplying the trees needed to build the forest at Buffelsdraai Landfill that is helping to offset the 2010 World Cup carbon footprint. At the same time, their involvement in the project is helping these women feed their families and educate their children.

The Moses Mabhida Artworks Project aims to highlight the Kwazulu-Natal art industry through commissioning local groups and individuals to provide art for the stadium and surrounding precinct, employing beadwork, woodcarving, ceramics, painting embroidery and wirework. Women are involved heavily in this sector. One of the largest beadwork projects ever made in Africa, for example, is being produced by more than 200 women associated with the Hillcrest AIDS Centre. It's a 4,5m-long fantasy map of Africa and will be hung in the President's Atrium at the stadium. Complementing this will be a 4m-long beaded South African flag produced by women from the African Art Centre.

Women also feature prominently in the group of 20 or so people - some of whom are disabled - creating a mosaic mural for the stadium's Ocean Atrium. Depicting a breaking wave, the mural will use only tiles hand-made for the project.