Education

Conventionally, the term ‘education’ is reserved for imparting knowledge to members of the younger generation. AWARE believes that it is imperative to promote respect for nature, and compassion for all animal life from a very early age. To this end, with every interactive project, educational books about animals are currently handed out to disadvantaged children.

It is our intention to start a school tour (urban and rural) where interactive discussions about the value of wildlife and animal welfare will take place. Demonstrations showing how to administer basic animal health care will take place.

However, we also feel that the future of wildlife conservation and animal welfare lies with present day adults who are often ignorant despite being well educated.

Surprisingly few people think in global terms. Fewer still realise that the earth’s population is doubling every 40 years and that if humanity continues to reproduce at this exponential rate, wild areas will shrink and life on earth will become unsustainable. In many societies having children is traditionally seen as the ‘done’ thing. AWARE would like to cause people to seriously consider whether they want children before they get pregnant. We would like to cause people to think about the consequences their actions will have before they do them. In time, our education programme will include lectures for adults.

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Prophylactic Campaign Education Programme

Most of our education programmes have co-incided with our prophylactic campaigns and donkey clinics. Picture booklets are given out to children containing compassionate stories about dogs and donkeys. In Machuchuta and Malipati, AWARE arranged lectures for the Junior and Senior School (respectively) of the areas, talking to them about the importance of animals and their handling, health and welfare as well as a short talk on the importance of conservation and biodiversity.

Urban Schools Education Programme

In the later part of 2010, two talks were held as a trial run for a future education campaign in Harare. The talks were given to the Wildlife Groups at Arundel Senior School and to St George’s College. Both talks were done in powerpoint-presentation format and were very interactive, with students being encouraged to get involved in discussions about conservation and animal welfare. This is a progamme we are planning to expand countrywide and translate it into the vernacular for rural schools.