UMUSAMBI means Grey crowned crane in Kiyarwanda. Umusambi village is a wildlife sanctuary, set up on reclaimed urban wetlands by the Rwanda Wildlife Conservation Association. It was Kigali’s first such site, and is now an amazing visitor attraction, an education and research centre and above all provides a safe and permanent home to injured grey crowned cranes, wild ones that have chosen to come and live there and a host of other wildlife. It is where we met for a PACE training last month.
The training was designed specifically for RWCA’s Conservation club leaders. Referred to as club ‘mentors’ they are volunteers, some teach as a day job, others work in agric, some are just excited by environmental issues and sharing with young people. In their spare time they run Kids Conservation clubs in their home areas – which are all adjacent to important wildlife areas. Each club has just one mentor and up to 70 kids, who meet weekly to discuss and learn about the environment and get involved in activities to protect their local habitats and wildlife. They do a lot, including gardening, bird watching, waste management and tree planting. The mentors have been using the PACE book Africa our Home for some years, but RWCA have been keen for them to to go further, so we organised this 3 day workshop. Two trainers joined us from Zimbabwe, to co-facilitate with the PACE coordinator and RWCA Education officer.
The mentors all came with a list of challenges they are fighting against: lack of teaching materials, and problems with the level and language in those they do have, lack of meeting space, need for more activities, activities suitable for the limited resources they have, storage space, subject matter knowledge for themselves, too many kids. It felt a bit daunting. However, after one session of group work, they found their own solutions to probably half of their problems – collaboration is a marvelous thing!
We learned that they weren’t aware of the full extent of the PACE resources, nor that so much is available online. Sessions digging deeper, into the action sheets and films were eye-opening. The PACE website was accessed and explored on every phone and tablet in the room, so while many don’t have network at home, they at least know where and how to find and navigate the PACE online library. Thanks to DHL we were also able to provide each club with sets of AOH books and region specific PACE materials, on Mountain gorillas, Vultures, Okapi and Pangolin. Palloma led a session in which we explored these booklets, learned how to get kids ‘reading the pictures,’ explaining and discussing what they see, giving mentors confidence to let kids handle and discover from books, not fearing that the information was in words alone.
Four action sheets were selected, and put into practice: making a compost pit, making plant tea (home made fertiliser), a tippy tap and using a solar stove. Skillful facilitation from Providence and Wilton in particular helped us all see how to really include kids in activities, not just show them, but involve them, and maximise learning. People found their own interests, one left anxious to practice soap making, another solar cooking, anothers interest was the mushroom cultivation action sheet.
Wilton organised a role playing exercise on community outreach, that taught us how to use drama in conservation education, while thinking about impact, and how to not just entertain and inform our club members, but get them actioning conservation, putting solutions in to practice.
Providence’s session on monitoring and evaluation felt squeezed in, but it was noted as having been one of the most useful – participants said it made them realise what their real purpose was, what they should be achieving.
We learned from everyone at RWCA, are creating new resources with their experts on Bats, Cranes and Wetlands, helping Providence produce an RWCA Conservation club activity book and looking forward to a follow up workshop next year.
” A well planned and informative event where everyone was a learner and an educator. This training equipped us all with information and skills to apply in our day to day conservation education efforts. ” Palloma Pachiti.
” This is going to be a game-changing training.. ” Deo Ruhagazi, Deputy Director, RWCA.