By Dr Kristine Meise | Project Manager
As you can imagine many changes and challenges have taken place since our last project report 3 months ago.
At the beginning of April Botswana declared a nationwide shutdown in response to the emerging Coronavirus crisis. This was in the middle of the farming season and meant we were not able to assist our partnering farmers on a daily basis as is our protocol. To make sure the farmers would have all mitigation materials they needed for the duration of the lockdown, to protect their harvest from crop-raiding elephants, the team worked tirelessly to drive hundreds of kilometres in a matter of days, supplying chilli and advice where needed. Luckily, the two old ladies of the team, Leya and Shumba (the vehicles), were on their best behaviour and so we were able to visit and assist all 36 farmers that ploughed this season.
Officially the lockdown lasted until the end of May however there are many restrictions still in place, but we are able to slowly start running our outreach and education programme again and have returned to the National Park for our research work. This may leave you wondering what we have done for the duration of the lockdown, well we have certainly been busy; team members working from home and from the camp have used the time to develop the lesson plans and 2-year curriculum for our new partnering school, the Junior Secondary School in Motopi. Through this new partnership, we are extending our program into the fourth community and we look forward to building on this. We developed new ideas for workshops and improved old ones, and we invested a considerable amount of time writing funding applications to make sure the new ideas can become a reality and we fill funding gaps that unfortunately have emerged due to this crisis. Much of our work is funded by the tourism industry and zoological societies, both of which have been hard hit by this crisis and thus have had to withdraw funding for the time being. They have all expressed their desire to continue supporting our work as and when they can, and we, of course, wish them well during this difficult time. We are thinking of all our wonderful funders and supporters throughout the world and hope that you and your loved ones are safe and well.
Hopefully, in the next newsletter, we will be able to update you on some of the progress we made with of our new ideas.
Best wishes and stay safe.
The EfA Team
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By Dr Kate Evans | Founder & Director
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