Botswana's future environmental stewards

It is with great joy that I can report that we are now back at our four partner schools, starting back in February after various meetings with the Environmental Club teachers and junior secondary school staff in January, where we introduced them to Mogomotsi Radinonyane, our new Community Outreach Officer who will lead our school's education programme. Mogomotsi attributes his love of nature to when he was a young boy herding the family goats, harvesting the wild fruits on the way, learning about the signs of nature, listening to, and learning about the birds and other animals that shared his landscape. He comes to us from Khama Rhino Sanctuary Trust where he was an Assistant Environmental Education Officer and Safari Guide. His fear is that future generations will only see elephants and other wildlife in photos, whilst we had the privilege of seeing them in the wild. I think you will agree that the students are in good hands and our programme will thrive under his guidance alongside the continued support and insight from Walona, our previous Community Outreach Officer. The new year has started off well with 130 students engaged and eager to learn. Our first lesson focused on Food Chains, Food Webs and Trophic Cascades and this month we are learning about Pollution and Waste Management. As always, the classes are focused on being outside the classroom and engaging students in their environment, which the students and the teachers enjoy. We are so grateful for your support that has enabled us to continue supporting the schools during the pandemic and now, with health and safety high on the agenda, as we reengage with them in person. We have reached our goal for this fundraiser as it was set up for a year, but we shall be duplicating the fundraising as this is an ongoing programme and so we hope you can continue to support us for the coming year(s).

Let us start with the wonderful news that our team on the ground are now all vaccinated, and whilst we know this does not mean we can drop our guard, we are hoping it may make it easier to reconnect in person with our schools. In anticipation of this, the recent inclusion of our first Junior Secondary School and plans to run a careers day next year, alongside more and more invitations to share our Environmental Education curriculum with schools nationally and internationally, we have recruited a new Community Outreach Officer to head up the programme. They will replace Walona, who will continue to support this programme in his new role as Community Outreach and Education Coordinator. The new Community Outreach Officer will be joining us in December and we look forward to introducing you next time.

With the multiple lockdowns in Botswana during the past 18 months, the students at all the schools we work with have been heavily impacted. When the schools closed, their academic education stopped, as these students do not have access to online learning and so they have missed out on a lot of their education. The teachers of course are worried about how they will perform in their upcoming exams. Whilst we cannot give back their time and lessons, the teachers asked if we help get all the stationery and equipment needed for their Standard 7 (13-year-olds) and Form 3 students (16-year-olds) as they prepared for their exams.

In our recent #ExamReady campaign, alongside some unrestricted funding we had available, we managed to get stationery, revision books and hand sanitiser for 250 students across 5 schools. So going into their exams they knew that Elephants for Africa and our supporters around the world care for them and want them to do well in their exams.

Thank you for the support of our program, your donation is really changing young peoples lives.

Best wishes

The EfA Team