Providing Outreach to Local Communities

The first half of July was a great month with the Outreach and Wildlife Crime Campaigns being held in Leoma Secondary School. They were received by the pupils with enthusiasm and excitement.

 These 2 programs had to be put on hold due to mid-year exams and our long-term Outreach volunteer having to return to his own country. We have had difficulties finding an Outreach volunteer due to visa complications, BUT we are so happy to welcome Camilla Brotons back. 

Camilla updated/upgraded our outreach program, during her previous volunteer experience, and  has now been attributed the position of Outreach Director.

 The Outreach and Eco-Club programmes will be up and running again at the Maahlemele Secondary School in November 2022.

 We look forward to continuing to inspire and ignite a passion and understanding of the environment and wildlife in the community once again.

Thank you for your ongoing support

Take care and stay safe

Dear Friends,

We have been busy and achieved a lot since our last report!

We successfully reintroduced our wildlife crime campaign project, which had previously been postponed since June 2021, due to the pandemic. In May and June, we facilitated two separate wildlife crime campaigns at Sekoko and Maatla primary schools in Finale Village, serving over 80 students. These campaigns consist of three different lessons and workshops based around wildlife crime topics such as poaching, deforestation, and pollution - issues that are particularly prevalent in the surrounding areas. Our survey results show impressive improvements in the students’ understanding of these issues, and the campaign should serve as a helpful stepping stone and introduction to the topics which we cover when we host many of the students at DAKTARI next year.

Meanwhile, we also commenced our third eco-club of the year, at Leoma secondary school.

Despite being on school holidays for the majority of the period, the 14 dedicated students turned up to all of the lessons and produced some fantastic work. They carried out rubbish picks, planted trees, wrote letters to their school principal, designed posters, and produced some excellent presentations about the environment. Hoedspruit Reptile Centre recently sponsored our students on an educational excursion. The students received a lecture about snakes and other reptiles, a guided tour of the reptile centre, and even a snake-handling demonstration with puff-adders, cobras, and boomslang snakes! This was a highly educational experience that dispelled many misconceptions about snakes and gave our students a unique opportunity to interact with animals. With the eco-club ceremony coming up soon, we look forward to seeing how the students showcase what they have learnt! 

Thank you for your ongoing support!

Stay safe and have a good day,

Dear friends,

On April 27th, as we were celebrating Freedom Day, we were surprised to have all the students from the Eco Club show up in class. Their motivation for learning more is truly amazing. As they do not have a lot of opportunities to be more involved in extracurricular activities, these students are taking every opportunity they get to learn more. 

One of the students gave us a testimony in which she said “On Freedom Day, we came back to school because we wanted to learn more. We really did enjoy it because it was really funny and we are really motivated. And I found it very inspiring because learning more things is very unique because you get to know a lot of things that you didn’t even have the knowledge about. I really enjoy Eco Club!”

It was the same on this Monday, which was Workers Day, where all the class was present for a lesson on how to make South Africa a better place.

Also, we would like to thank Moholoholo Rehabilitation Center which opened its gate to 12 of our students so they can learn more about their wildlife. It was a great experience for them as they could see very rare animals such as the black leopard and the white lions.

The ceremony will take place at the end of the week in Finale with all the children and their relatives.

Stay safe and have a good day!

Dear friends,

The first Eco-Club project of 2022 finished with a beautiful ceremony!

Our Outreach Manager has been running the Eco-Club project over the past six weeks with over thirty students at Maahlamele High School. The Grade 9 students have learned so much and many of them have become passionate about protecting their natural environment.

The students are selected from a pool of applications. Then, they take part in various lessons and activities around the environment like the geography of Africa, waste management, tree planting, and wildlife crime. They made their final presentation about these different lessons.

Also, after all these sessions, 2 ambassadors were chosen to help the Outreach Manager in his future lessons to other schools. They are the representatives of the program in their school and their community.

The ceremony was held on a Saturday to allow the students’ families and friends to come, along with some of the volunteers in the local church for a presentation made by the students. Their excitement was obvious. This was a great opportunity for their community to learn as well.

They received different gifts and certificates to acknowledge their participation and dedication. To reward them, the students also got the chance to visit DAKTARI for a night, where they could see the animals and the staff one more time. They had few lessons but mainly a good time around the pool or games and dancing!

By empowering underprivileged children to become actors of social and environmental change within their community, we are making South Africa a better place.

We hope all is well on your side and thank you again for your trust and support.

Dear friends,

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we have not been running any of our core outreach projects in the past three months - this includes the eco-clubs, wildlife crime campaigns, and homestays. The pandemic has created distrust towards ‘outsiders’, so rather than risking our community relationships during this period, we chose to postpone our outreach activities and focus on planning and preparation for the next calendar year. This has given our new Outreach Manager, Samuel Bishop, the chance to settle into his role and ensure that the outreach projects are fully operational and effective as soon as the local communities and schools are ready. The good news is that we now have a designated outreach vehicle. This will greatly enhance the reach of the outreach programme, and also ensure greater flexibility. 

Eco-Club

The eco-club project has not been running during the past quarter. However, the project is planned to recommence on the 18th January 2022 (after the school holidays) with Grade 9 students at Maahlamele High School. It will take place every Tuesday and Thursday after school for a cycle of six weeks. We will recruit a maximum of thirty students to ensure a more personal and better quality learning environment. Although the quality of applications will be taken into consideration, the application process will try and ensure that a range of abilities is selected - this will enable peer development. 

During the last session, we will hold an eco-club awards ceremony. This is to celebrate the achievements of the students over the duration of their six week cycle. It will be held in a community venue and family members of the students will also be invited to attend. The students will present what they have learnt, and various awards will be handed out. We also hope to host all of the eco-club students at DAKTARI for one night (on a Saturday) as a reward for their hard work in the eco-club. After Maahlamele, we will repeat the process at Leoma Secondary School and Rakgolokwana Secondary School.

Homestay

The homestay project has not been running for the vast majority of the past quarter. However, as of the 10th December 2021, it will be back up and running. We re-established contact with one of our reliable homestay families in the Oaks Village and agreed to start the homestay project back up again. We had four of our volunteers booked to stay with our host family. This is a great supplement to our host families’ income and a great cultural immersion experience for our volunteers and guests. We hope to build relationships with several other host families in the Oaks Village so that the project can have a wider reach within the Oaks community. We also hope to liaise with local lodges to advertise our homestay excursion to their guests too. By building partnerships with several host families in the Oaks and with several of the surrounding lodges, the homestay project will have the income generating power to significantly contribute to the Oaks’ community development. 

Wildlife Crime Campaigns 

A similar story to the eco-club project, our wildlife crime campaign project has not been running in the past quarter. We are now able to re-introduce this project to the surrounding primary schools - we have contacted them and they are in agreement. However, since our wildlife crime campaigns take place during secondary school examination periods (the next one is May/June), we are currently a long way off. 

We are looking forward to running more community projects and will host income-generating workshops in the next calendar year. 

We hope all is well on your side and thank you again for your trust and support. 

Links:

• See our activity on Instagram
• See our activity on Facebook