Education Cambodia Project #7510

Raise Awareness to Protect Wildlife in Cambodia

by Wildlife Alliance

Raise Awareness to Protect Wildlife in Cambodia

Project Report | Sep 9, 2011
Summer 2011 Activities Update

By Allison Bender | Development and Communications Associate

Asian Elephant educational chart

The Kouprey Express Environmental Education Project provides environmental educational outreach and extension activities to teachers, schoolchildren, and communities living around protected areas. Activities are based on teacher workshop, teaching directly by Kouprey Express staff to students, conducting community night show, and organizing Phnom Tamao visits. These are all aimed to increase environmental awareness and promote conservation of Cambodian wildlife. To reach this aim, the KE staff provides training to teachers on Environmental Education Materials based on six modules such as weather, water & sanitation, waste & sanitation, energy, conservation & biodiversity, and livelihood to the target schools in Koh Kong province.

Teacher Capacity Building

During the summer holidays when schools are not in session – a 3-month period from July to October – the KE staff focused on capacity building and training. This includes English lessons to increase their English skills at the Australian Centre for Education (ACE), the top English school in Cambodia, as well as computer lessons on Access, Photoshop, and Excel at Asia Euro University. These classes will finish at the end of September, just in time for the new school year to begin in Koh Kong.

Developing New Lessons

Historically, the KE staff use environment flip charts to teach teachers and students. To expand the project, and add more concepts about Cambodia’s endangered species to increase awareness of those species, the threats facing them, and promote the wildlife rescue hotline number through species-speicifc lesson plans.

The species-specific lessons focus on Asian Elephants, apes, pangolins, tigers, bears, and reptiles. The team will provide lessons that include information on the species’ physical characteristics, habitats, threats, how to conserve them, and have a Question & Answer element as well. Two games are also created which accompany each lesson: My Home and Biodiversity games.

New Learning Games for Students

Biodiversity Game

Students are divided into groups and share pieces of paper with an animal’s name written on it. We then hide the animal’s picture somewhere in the room/location and students are given 5 minutes to search for the animal’s picture which matches the sheet of paper. Who matches it fastest is the winner.

My Home Game (similar to dodge ball)

Students are divided into three groups: group one are trees, group two are animals, and two individuals are hunters. The tree group stands around the animal group, which is standing in the circle while the hunters try to hunt animals by throwing the ball from outside the circle line. The job of the trees is to help protect the animals from the hunters. If the animals can dodge the ball and avoid being hit, the animals are the winner, but if they get hit, the hunters are the winner. Play is 5 minutes.

Planning Phnom Tamao Visit

The new schools in the first half of 2011 proved to be difficult to reach for large buses so PTWRC field trips have not been as many as we hoped. Instead, the team is interested in coordinating with local orphanages and schools in Phnom Penh. The trip(s) will hopefully happen in early September.

Gibbon educational chart

Pangolin educational chart

'My Home Game' Visual Diagram

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Jun 22, 2011
A School Visit with Kouprey Express

By Allison Bender | Development and Communications Associate

Have you ever wondered what goes on when our Kouprey Express mobile environmental education unit visits a school?

The March school visits to Angkor Phnom Klong and Veal primary schools in the Cardamom Mountains are a typical example:

Teacher Capacity Building

For three days, the Kouprey Express staff and educators conducted intensive full-day workshops with ten teachers from Angkor Phnom Klong and Veal primary schools in Cambodia’s Koh Kong Province. The team delivered modules on weather, water resources, waste and sanitation, and energy and climate. The final day of workshops featured modules on biodiversity conservation and sustainable livelihoods. After these sessions, the teachers showed greater understanding of each module, and had clear instructions about how to integrate these environment concepts into their core classroom lessons and activities to increase awareness of their students of environmental issues and what the students can do to help protect their natural resources and have a positive impact on their environment.

Student Education

While developing teacher capacity is critical for the long-term success of our education initiatives, the core of the Kouprey Express remains classroom education with underserved village schools in protected areas. In rural Cambodia, access to education is only sporadic. Many students will attend school only until they can work full-time, and others will attend classes but have to work in agriculture or fishing during the busy part of the year.

At Angkor Phnom Klong and Veal primary schools, the Kouprey Express provided lessons for 290 students from Grades 4 through 6, using a flipchart-based curriculum that can easily be transferred from one school to another, maintaining a consistent lesson plan that was adapted in partnership with the environmental education NGO Live & Learn. Each school is supplied with a flipchart, complete with lesson plans, activities, and ideas that the teachers can use over and over again.

The Kouprey Express spent most of the week working with the teachers and students at Angkor Phnom Klong and Veal primary schools. Highlights of the visit included an interactive demonstration of the Web of Life game, which highlights the interconnectivity of forests, wildlife, and humans.

This game is played by the whole class either inside or outside the classroom, by giving pictures and a string to all students and asking students to stand as circle. For example, if a student is given a picture of the Sun, she will will need to explain why she is important and what role she plays, for example, “I am the sun so I will spread my light to feed the trees,” and then the Sun gives the string to the student holding the picture of a tree. After that the Tree will state his importance, for example, “I am a Tree and I need water for my life,” so the Tree passes the string to the student with the Water card, and so on. When the game finishes the strings from one student to another will look like a spider web. We then explain to students how important and interconnected the web of life is, and how no element can be removed from the ecosystem without affecting the well-being of the other components.

After each Kouprey Express visit, students and teachers are quizzed on their knowledge about environmental principles. The testing illustrates that students understand more clearly such concepts as wildlife protection, the meaning of extinction, and the importance of forests. In particular, students really enjoyed playing environmentally-themed games, such as the Web of Life game. After the school visit, many students also said they felt it is easier to spread environmental concepts and awareness to their friends and family, and share their knowledge with other members of the community.

Each visit to a school is a lengthy process - not simply the week or more spent at each site, but extensive preparation and curriculum development. Each set of trainings with teachers, and classroom- and field-based education with students is usually complemented with a Community Night Show (CNS) that reaches the broader community of nearby villages and settlements. In each CNS, the Kouprey Express team uses interactive games, videos, puppet shows, and music to illustrate environmental principles to the broader community - and thousands may attend each night, drawn in by the opportunity to also participate in karaoke and watch popular movies!

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