Botswana's future environmental stewards

Alongside our usual monthly activities, we were able to offer something new and innovative to our Environmental Club students at Moreomaoto Primary School. We hosted Ms Ana Raquel Sales, an MSc student from the Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal who our Founder and Director, Dr Kate Evans is supervising. Ana is studying Environmental Science and with a passion and skill in ballet and contemporary dance experience, her Masters study is focused on using dance as a medium for spreading conservation awareness and highlighting conservation issues, through developing a dance with students to communicate elephant conservation.

Ms Sales conducted her training with a group of 22 students from Moreomaoto Primary School, who were very interested and enjoyed her instruction, coming up with wonderfully creative dances to express how an elephant might interact with other elephants and humans

Prior to her time with us in Botswana she worked with a group of ballet student in Portugal and developed a beautiful dance which was performed in a secondary school to see what messages were communicated.

By engaging the students we work with in different ways, such as through this programme, we believe we will inspire more young people to be the environmental stewards of the future and with your support we are making those opportunities possible. Thank you.

Mogomotsi Radinonyane, our Community Outreach Officer and the team have been busy with the schools in our region and the kids are really enjoying being back at school and in a recognisable routine again. For children throughout the world the impact of the pandemic will be long-lasting, both emotionally and the effect on their education. Perhaps the latter to a bigger degree for the children we support. When the school closed there were no digital online teaching options when the schools closed the lessons stopped. In our own small way, and therefore in your own way, we are doing our best to help them catch up. Our monthly environmental Education activities at each of the 4 schools are very well attended and it is a joy to see the enthusiasm of the children to learn and be involved.

These past three months we have engaged the children in hands-on learning and despite the cold, the lessons continue to be outside, which not only engages the children in their environment but of course, helps with the Covid Restrictions in place at the schools. Getting them moving is key to keeping them warm and minds active and so active games help us with both. The games centre around ecology and they learn about key ecological processes, such as keystone species, predation, and trophic cascades. Play is so often the best way to learn. At the end of most lessons, the children reflect on their learnings of the day in their own exercise books, and it is always such a joy to read their words and see their drawings. Slowly but surely, we really are building the local conservationists of the future.

Thanks so much for your support of our programme and therefore the support we can give the children in the communities we have the privilege of working with.