Conservation Education

One of David Shepherd Wildlife Foundations core aims is to support children and young people to become effective advocates for wildlife conservation and biodiversity in the UK and internationally.

UK

It has been a busy few months in the UK education team with our team travelling across the country visiting mainly schools in the South with some sessions as far as Birmingham and Devon. We are consistently delivering talks and workshops to 6-8 schools and over 900 children per month. We now working with special schools in Durham and London to make our content more effective with SEND students. We are working with 16-19 education providers in Portsmouth, Reigate, and Basingstoke to help students deliver their own extended projects in wildlife conservation with support of our overseas projects. Finally, using inspiration from a TED talk in how to stop lions killing cattle in Zambia, we are developing a new workshop where primary children wire up their own model corral with LED lights based on the electricity components of the national curriculum. We are looking forward to 2024 and developing more ways to engage young people with the issues of biodiversity and wildlife conservation.

India

In India,both the ‘Rhino’ and ‘Tiger Go to School’ programmes have continued, with 22 programmes completed in 2023. This programme enables our partners to reach the communities residing in the fringe villages of rhino and tiger bearing areas of Assam, generating awareness among them. This is crucial, as these populations are in close proximity with wildlife. The programmes have gained considerable popularity this year, providing opportunity for the team to engage more people and perform mass awareness – helping mitigate human wildlife conflict and enabling smooth co-existence between human beings and wild animals.

Guinea

In the past six months, our partners have been working with villages to the north of the High Niger National Park, where they have organised a nature club and workshops about the local ecosystem and the threats it faces. The nature club involved children who don’t go to school, as well as those who do. Activities are done in a fun way and the children are loving it. Even children from surrounding villages have come along to participate, as well as their parents. Communities showed a genuine interest in the education clubs and programme and shared their wishes to see the education programmes prolonged within their villages. The two new educators, funded by DSWF, have been vital to this success. Thanks to the education team’s incredible progress, relationships with northern villages have tightened and are now very strong and continue to foster peaceful coexistence between humans and chimpanzees.

Zambia

The Wildlife Discovery Centre continued to inspire and motivate both adults and children in 2023. A total of 2,357 school children attended the centre in the last three months – nearly doubling the total from the previous quarter. The DSWF supported bus has played a vital part in enabling some schools to access and visit the centre. A total of 15 discovery days were also conducted, with 324 students and 39 teachers taking part. Further activities, including a conservation careers fair and a snake bite awareness talk, were also held at the centre for interested parties.

Thank you for your support, without which, this work would not be possible. Together we can inspire the next generation of conservationists.

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