Environmental Education in rural communities in South Africa

Started in 2011, our Environmental Education program work daily with children from primary schools teaching environmental education and taking these learners on conservation-based field trips, to give them an understanding of nature and their role in protecting it. Poaching/illegal killing of wildlife has become a daily threat to conservation, with rhino poaching (as well as lion, elephant, pangolin, and vulture) threatening on a daily basis. Animals are being killed for their horns, tusk, bones or skins.
We believe that conservation and communities cannot exist in isolation of each other - hence our goals through all our projects to interlink, grow, conserve and uplift. The holism of our programs is important as it works with the community as a whole to see the problems in a bigger picture.

Typical day
You will be immersed into the project as one of the team members to engage in the planning and running of the programs, from 8am to 4pm, spending the full morning to prepare everything before the kids arrive (around 1:30pm) with
- Helping our staff to be ready for the day
- Going to one of our outreach school to provide our environmental lessons
- Creating content for the Green Kidz programs (Environmental Lessons, workshop, presentation etc..)
- Supervising the activities with the kids
- Helping the kids with projects
- Supervising kids on field trips, camps when they happen and external activities.

Volunteers will stay at a Backpackers situated on the same property. The work is very hand-on, so expect to be busy but remember to have fun!

We have a programming structure as follows:

- Green Kidz (our environmental education programme - We support 11 elementary-schools around the area)
- Social Enterprise, where we support and grow small businesses through an incubator
- Agro-Ecology training, very similar to permaculture, but more suited to African conditions
- Rise creches (Our Early Childhood Development programme. We support 6 pre-schools around the area)
- Eco Village (this includes our recycling programme and our general day to day outreach into the village around us).

You will be immersed into the project as one of the team members to engage in the planning and running of the programs. You can combine our projects during your time with us or focusing on one (your choice). You will have the opportunity to explore our amazing area during the weekend (extra cost - We can organize it!)

We can't wait to have you join our Family!