Education Botswana Project #50038

Botswana's future environmental stewards

by Elephants for Africa

Botswana's future environmental stewards

Project Report | Jul 21, 2021
Botswana's schools still disrupted by Covid-19

By Kate Evans | Founder & Director

Wild Shots Outreach photography workshop

The year got off to a promising start with our school’s environmental education programme extending into Motopi Junior Secondary school in February which was the first time we have been able to engage face-to-face with a school. Whilst we have not been able to return to the classrooms in the junior schools, we have continued to liaise with the teachers to assist them wherever we can and continue to develop posters that summarise information about a topic that engage the students.

We have also been working on a comic that tells the story of a young cattle boy and his journey as he begins to understand the importance of elephants in the economy and ecology of his community and country. The artist is now busy finalising the artwork and we hope to get it to print in the next month and distributed to our schools and further afield as soon as possible. We shall certainly keep you posted on that.

Sadly, on Friday last week, the schools were closed for another month as Covid-19 cases reached their highest in Botswana and President Maisisi announced a state of emergency. They should reopen on the 16^th of August and the President said the government would prioritise vaccinating teachers during the closure of schools as the virus has been widespread in learning institutions.

Another area we have been focusing on recently is the education of the youth (18-30year olds), many of whom never had the opportunity to finish their education, having to leave school after primary school or during their secondary education for various reasons. In the past, we have run workshops on entrepreneurship and in June this year we partnered with the award-winning South African NGO Wild Shots Outreach for a photographic workshop and the weeklong course was a real hit. It gave young community members the opportunity to see wildlife through new eyes and for many, it was the first time they had ever visited the Makgadikgadi Pans National Park which their village borders. We hope that we are able to offer more young people the opportunity in 2022.

As well as educating school children and the youth in Botswana, we think it is important that we educate children around the world to appreciate the beauty of elephants and the challenges that living alongside them can present. We, therefore, give talks to students around the world. Skype a Scientist is one means that we are able to connect with classrooms from the safety of our office and reach children in many different regions of our world and we have enjoyed connecting with children in Ireland, England, Canada and the US to date.

Covid is challenging us in many ways as we eagerly await vaccinations for all our team members and of course the communities we work with. We are working hard to adapt and work with the school as much as we can and we thank you for your support, especially during these challenging times.

We look forward to updating you again soon. Until then take care and stay safe.

Best wishes

The EfA Team

Portrait buy Anthony Oratile

Image of Wild Shots Outreach Participant

Skype a Scientist feedback from the children

Links:

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Mar 23, 2021
Global Pandemic drives innovation in education

By Kate Evans | Founder & Director

Growing up in an environment where human-wildlife interactions are common and the solutions complex, it is important that children are equipped with the knowledge of navigating these interactions which can lead to conflict. Our much-anticipated partnership with Motopi Junior Secondary School kick-started in February when we visited Form 3 students to discuss land use conflict and eco-tourism. Walona, our Community Outreach Officer, was very excited to return to the classroom to engage with the children which is the first time he has been able to do so since April 2020 as Botswana’s school closed during a national wide lockdown and we made the decision that we would not return to the schools until 2021 at the earliest, to protect the children and the staff of both the schools and Elephants for Africa (EfA).

As many of the students at Motopi Junior Secondary School (where many children board during the week as there are no daily transport options) are from villages with abundant fauna and flora, bordering National Parks and with high concentrations of human-wildlife interactions and/or conflict, it is vital that students are imparted with an understanding of the issues from the perspective of conservationists, With a great emphasis on knowing what resources their communities have, this can help them understand why land-use conflict may arise and how to resolve such conflicts, and why ecotourism is important to Botswana and holds opportunities for them. We look forward to engaging the children further and helping to develop the solution finders of the future.

Whilst the junior secondary school is allowing visits, as the older children are more responsive to the government guidelines on Covid safety and in February, we have yet to return to our partner primary schools. Whilst the Covid-19 suspended our face to face educational activities in 2020 it has not stopped us from educating, we have had to be innovative in our approaches which have seen us adopt alternative ways of delivering educational materials to our partnering schools as remote digital learning is simply not an option for the rural schools we work with. Liaising with the teachers we have developed posters depicting information about a topic were and distributed these to our partnering schools providing useful material for the children and staff including but not restricted to the Environmental Club members, engaging students in some of the topics that they have missed out on due to school closures and we have had great feedback from the teachers about how useful they are.

We look forward to updating you again soon. Until then take care.

Best wishes

The EfA Team

Links:

https://www.elephantsforafrica.org/elefun-2/

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