Igniting the Conservation Spark in the Younger Generation

Cheetah Conservation Botswana (CCB)’s staff have been busy conducting environmental education school talks in five schools in the Ghanzi region, bringing our fun lessons to over 800 children. The talks were held from the 16th of August to the 15th of September 2017 in the Ghanzi District, an area with a large number of cheetahs compared to other regions in Botswana. Conservation education is one of the programs CCB uses to pass conservation knowledge to members of the public. Whilst welcoming the CCB team to Rethuseng Junior school, Ms Lekgothu, the school’s environmental education coordinator encouraged the form one students to listen very attentively to what the CCB team had for them and ask questions where necessary.  By the end of the session, one could see that the presentation had made a positive impression in the young minds considering the questions that were asked. The students fired intelligent questions at our staff - wanting to know the diseases that affect cheetahs, what one should do when they see a cheetah in their farm and if CCB has cheetahs that it keeps in captivity. In giving a vote of thanks, Letlhabile, a student from Boipelo Primary School thanked the CCB team for having visited their school to teach them about conservation and she hoped that we would come back again. The Grootlaagte Primary School students warmly welcomed the CCB team with songs. Their teacher Mr Tabengwa kept a sharp eye on the students yet keeping the atmosphere charged with icebreakers and making the kids chant of their school slogan. The school head for the same school, Mrs Kebalepile also shared the same sentiments with her colleagues and students and requested that her school be assisted with starting simple environmental education projects which would help students in continuously taking care of the environment. In order to reach all five of these schools, our staff had to travel more than 400km. A journey that seemed endless in the unforgiving terrain and the Kalahari heat finally came to an end with one major goal achieved; a future generation that is more informed and caring about nature and issues that affect the environment.