Yesterday was Friday.  And that meant one thing – environmental education!  For the last few months or so, we’ve been swapping our boots and clipboards for chalk boards, songs and games and heading into the Base Academy (a small primary school in the village) to teach the children about environmental issues and some basic science.

We feel it is really important to give the children this sort of knowledge and awareness about the environment around them because firstly, what they learn in school about such issues is minimal and basic, and it doesn’t cover the things that affect their everyday lives.

This is why we have been focusing our lessons on areas that the children can relate to such as coastal forests, the importance of forests and the animals that live there, effects of deforestation, pollution etc.  A couple of weeks ago, we decided to re-brand our weekly lesson, and form a wildlife club for the kids.  This means they are now part of the Shimoni Base Academy Wildlife Club!  We felt this would encourage a sense of ownership and pride in the children who come, and would really make them feel a part of something. 

 The children coming back from the forest

We think it has worked really well, as we now have a regular group of about 30 children that are there every Friday, who all wear their Wildlife Club badges with pride, and sing the Club song through the village!  And since forming the Club, we have been putting an emphasis on actually taking the children into the forest every week.  The idea behind this is to get them out there, seeing the plants and animals for themselves, and getting them out of the classroom and excited about nature, the forest and the wildlife. 

So far its been a huge success; the kids absolutely love being taken out into the forest, and they have really enjoyed the topics we’ve covered so far.  We’ve been going over basic plant biology (as this was in their syllabus and their exams were coming up so we thought that would help), where we actually showed them the different plant species and the different parts.  Then we gave a lesson on butterflies, followed by sweep netting in the forest – they absolutely loved that (and were rather good at it…I’m considering using them for our surveys!), where we also showed them how to get the butterflies out of the nets without hurting them. 

And then yesterday we tried to touch on the subject of colobus behaviour.  We managed to get across the basic idea of why we study their behaviour, how colobus behaviour is adversely affected by things such as disturbance, and then what possible impacts this could have.  It went surprisingly well, and they grasped the concept really well.  It was a very simplified version of course, with the basic premise being if the colobus are undisturbed they will spend more time feeding, resting, sleeping and socialising, whereas if the forest around them is being disturbed, they may spend more time alert or travelling.

They are a great bunch of kids to work with, all so eager to learn and take part.  Hopefully we will be helping these children to grow up into environmentally aware adults, who understand about their surroundings, and take pride in the beautiful areas they live in.