Botswana's future environmental stewards

Growing up in an environment where human-wildlife interactions are common and the solutions complex, it is important that children are equipped with the knowledge of navigating these interactions which can lead to conflict. Our much-anticipated partnership with Motopi Junior Secondary School kick-started in February when we visited Form 3 students to discuss land use conflict and eco-tourism. Walona, our Community Outreach Officer, was very excited to return to the classroom to engage with the children which is the first time he has been able to do so since April 2020 as Botswana’s school closed during a national wide lockdown and we made the decision that we would not return to the schools until 2021 at the earliest, to protect the children and the staff of both the schools and Elephants for Africa (EfA).

As many of the students at Motopi Junior Secondary School (where many children board during the week as there are no daily transport options) are from villages with abundant fauna and flora, bordering National Parks and with high concentrations of human-wildlife interactions and/or conflict, it is vital that students are imparted with an understanding of the issues from the perspective of conservationists, With a great emphasis on knowing what resources their communities have, this can help them understand why land-use conflict may arise and how to resolve such conflicts, and why ecotourism is important to Botswana and holds opportunities for them. We look forward to engaging the children further and helping to develop the solution finders of the future.

Whilst the junior secondary school is allowing visits, as the older children are more responsive to the government guidelines on Covid safety and in February, we have yet to return to our partner primary schools. Whilst the Covid-19 suspended our face to face educational activities in 2020 it has not stopped us from educating, we have had to be innovative in our approaches which have seen us adopt alternative ways of delivering educational materials to our partnering schools as remote digital learning is simply not an option for the rural schools we work with. Liaising with the teachers we have developed posters depicting information about a topic were and distributed these to our partnering schools providing useful material for the children and staff including but not restricted to the Environmental Club members, engaging students in some of the topics that they have missed out on due to school closures and we have had great feedback from the teachers about how useful they are.

We look forward to updating you again soon. Until then take care. 

Best wishes

The EfA Team

Links:

• https://www.elephantsforafrica.org/elefun-2/