Educate African Children to Save Their Environment

Hello All!

Firstly, I would like to thank you all for your incredible support! Week in and week out we are reminded of all the amazing people who have helped us and are helping us achieve our goal of inspiring young people to care about the environment. For that, we are incredibly grateful!

Over the last few months we have continued on our mission of making a difference through education. In October we took the Winners of the Week for an incredible game drive. Not only did the children learn a lot about the bush and what it takes to become a field guide, but they also saw a leopard and it’s kill as well as a close encounter with a not-so-happy elephant! All in all, a great day!

The biggest highlight which I wanted to share with you came in mid November. As the children which we usually take entered into their exam season, we wanted to come up with a way to continue providing a service to the community.

Over the years we have taken on local volunteers who had previously been to DAKTARI as children, and came back to lend a hand. They act as extra support with translation to the international volunteers, but also provide a role model for the children as someone who is involved with conservation. More importantly, these young local volunteers are a great example of the dire situation of youth unemployment in the area.

As a result, we decided that during the children’s exam period we would take on young adults that had already finished school and focus the program more towards employability skills. Although the program maintains the essence of environmental education and interactions with the animals at the wildlife orphanage, these older learners also took part in workshops aimed at writing a CV, creating a cover letter, job interviews, and even presentation skills.

It has been an incredible experience, and we have decided to take on this alternative teaching program for the future to help a different demographic of learners. It has also been incredibly successful as three of the learners left with employment leads at a nearby game reserve! In addition to this, one of the learners, Patience, has found a job as Environmental Monitor and will now be actively involved in teaching at local schools about the environment and wildlife!

We also wanted to invite you to participate in our December fundraiser on GlobalGiving! From December 1^st until December 31^st all donations made to this project (Educate African children to save their environment) will be entered into a competition which could see us win a grand prize of $3000! If you would like to learn more or to get involved with this fundraiser please send us an email at marketing@daktaribushschool.org !   

Links:

• The link to the December Fundraiser!

Hello all!

We have a lot of news coming from the last few months! As with most projects, it has been a very intense past few months! The challenges we face day in and day out are sometimes outside of our control, but the satisfaction which rises from the positives makes it easy to overcome all the struggles. You, through your donations, have made it possible for us to overcome these difficulties and provide the educational program for the children!

In August we took the children who had been declared the ‘winners of the week’ for the previous 10 weeks on a game drive in Makalali Game Reserve. As it is home to the Big Five, the children were able to spot many of the animals they learned about at DAKTARI and see them in their natural habitat. It is at times like these, where we see the children a few weeks after their stay at DAKTARI, that we are able to really appreciate to what extent their experience with us has made an impact. A lot of the children see volunteers again and are proud to tell them that they have started doing better at school, or that they are now recycling more at home. More importantly, their fascination with and respect towards wildlife is palpable at the game drive. It is incredible to see how they are blown away by something which they have lived next to for a long time but were never aware was there!

In contrast to the success that was the Winner’s game drive; over the last few weeks we have had to face the challenge of strikes and riots in the neighbouring communities surrounding DAKTARI. In addition to blocked roads and burned cars, these have made it dangerous to drive into the villages, something which we avoided for the sake of the children as well as our volunteers. As a result, most of the schools have also been closed, making it very difficult to organize the logistics to welcome children. However, the DAKTARI Project never stops! We are very proud to say that, even though it was difficult, we never stopped welcoming children throughout the strikes! We believe that difficulties such as these should not stand in the way of offering the educational program to as many children as we can reach. We arranged to take in children from schools that were in less conflictive areas, even though the schools were all closed. 

Again, a heartfelt thank you for supporting DAKTARI! Your donations make it possible for us to go out and work with the children every day. You motivate us to keep going and overcome times of difficulty! Moreover, you make a difference by allowing us to take that step further and motivate the children by being able to offer the game drive as a special prize for their efforts during the week!

From everyone at DAKTARI, as well as the children, we are tremendously thankful!

Best Regards, and until next time! 

Links:

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• Check out our website for more!