We are pleased to have helped Painted Dog Conservation, with planning, teaching and training materials and connections, as they take their education programme to Mana Pools area. PDC has a wonderful and long standing education programme. They work with communities and most notably with young people in their schools and through holiday camps – communities that live alongside Painted dogs.

Except, some of the dogs moved, away from their established range, into a new area, less busy but where the communities are potentially not very welcoming to a predator species they are not familiar with.

So, in June PDC brought teachers from schools in the new area together for an environment and conservation education workshop. It is remote, where teachers have been hearing about the conservation work in other places but felt left out. They were excited that PDC and parks thought about them finally. For most participants it was their first such kind of workshop.

They learned from very experienced experts – our colleagues Wilson the Education Officer at PDC, and Palloma who used PACE at Sebakwe Conservation Education Centre for many years, has been a PACE ‘Champion’ in the region, and now provides valuable Conservation Education training across Zimbabwe. They covered Student centred teaching and learning, the value of environmental projects, the PACE and PDC conservation education resources, and getting kids involved through school clubs. Everyone received packs containing the PACE Africa our Home, Painted dog & Vulture books, our films and action sheets, and a PDC Comic book on Painted dogs. Some already had environment clubs in their schools, those without were tasked to go back to school and establish conservation clubs.

The workshops took some time to organise, liasing with the Ministry of Education, National Parks, and other local stakeholders, then waiting for elections to pass.

Impressively, the impact is already very evident. Before August started the PDC Education officer said feedback was already – “Really great, very intelligent and exciting. All of a sudden they are now part of the national clean up campaign, which is something that’s been happening all over, but they were not really taking it seriously before. They have conservation clubs in place. They engaged with the Forestry Commission to get tree seedlings and are planting a lot of trees to make sure reafforestation takes place. They are using PACE, which is their framework, thanks to the training given by Palloma who was the key presenter at those workshops.”

We hope to stay involved and ensure the active clubs, new practices and care for local Painted dogs is a long term thing! Well done PDC and Palloma!