At the LWS, environmental education goes beyond the boundaries of the Lapalala Reserve. The Wilderness School supports the Eco Schools initiative, where nature is used as a teaching tool.
The Eco Schools programme helps local communities to grow and develop healthier relationships with nature, their environment and each other.
Lucas:
I am Lucas Ngobeni, I am working for Lapalala Wilderness School and I am heading the Out Reach Programme. So the main focus of the Out Reach Programme is to support the Eco Schools programmes in schools from our local communities.
Eco Schools is an international programme of the Foundation for Environmental Education. So locally, it is managed by WESSA, which stands for the Wildlife and Environmental Society of South Africa. So this programme is designed to support curriculum based action for a healthy environment.
The Eco Schools programme has far reaching positive effects. With the help and support of Lucas and the Lapalala Wilderness School, children and teachers from 22 different schools are able to learn more about the world and the importance of a healthy environment.
Margaret Kgwahla – Eco Schools coordinator at Matlou Memorial Primary:
Eco School helps us a lot. We used to receive some tutorials from WESSA and then it helps the educator how to prepare a lesson of the new curriculum and National Curriculum statements. And then also, these Eco School help us because we are teaching the learners about anything which is around their environment. And it is easy for us – they understand very well because they learn from the thing that they can touch and see.
Ramond Bronkhorst – Marken Primary School headmaster:
So for us, Eco School are bringing them back to the basics, back to gardening, back to nature. It is important that Eco Schools do not become a paperwork exercise where you compile a profile just everything in class – children must do something.
Over a period of 5 years, schools work hard to earn their Eco Schools flags and certifications. Under the guidance of Lucas, the programme helps children and adults to become creative, expressive and more connected with the natural world.
Children and schools can then take the knowledge and art created through the Eco Schools programme, and share this family, friends and their local communities.
Ramond:
So now the children can also learn to give. So Eco Schools also teaches them those basic of giving. I think that’s what it is all about.
Matlou Memorial teacher:
It is very important to the worldwide because this Eco Schools teach us how to live in the environment, how to care for the environment, how to sustain the, our environment, anything that can be remembered. Because these things, when you combine together, we think that it is important, and I think every school must join this project.
Lucas:
I think they really enjoy the Eco schools project. As you have seen at a few of the schools that we have visited, those kids are full of energy – especially when it comes to doing to the projects that they are doing. They are not just doing it to raise funds for the school, it is something that they are really enjoying, you know.
