Education project with elementary schools in Antalaha, SAVA region, Madagascar
Madagascar has been isolated from the African continent for millions of years, becoming the fourth largest island in the world. This isolation makes its biodiversity unique and rich, and present an endemism levels are around 90%. Since human settlement, the forest area has gone down by 90%. The causes of the destruction of the forest are generally anthropogenic, as 80 % of the population are farmer who clear land to make a living.
The SAVA region is located in north-eastern Madagascar which is among the regions with the largest forest area and variety of animals in Madagascar. The region represents at least three protected areas. Few people are aware about their beauty and care about the threat on biodiversity. Also the children don't know about the importance of biodiversity because of lack of means due to the poor educational system.
The district of Antalaha hosts the University, as well as private and public schools. Most of the private schools offer the opportunity to visit the forest or national parks to learn about the environment, but the children in the public school don't have this opportunity. Most of the children cannot reach the middle school (CEG, Collège d'Enseignement Générale) or high school cause of the parent financial situation or because of the remoteness of the village where they stay. Those students then leave the school without knowing the minimum about importance of the environment and how to save it for their future.
This is the reason why we want to establish a project of environmental education for the children in public school. The District of Antalaha content many public school, but we want to start to those surrounding the urban commune of Antalaha, which is in total 15. And the average number of students per school is 700.
Collaboration:
This project will not be possible without the collaboration between the responsible of the public schools, the local authorities, responsible of the National parks and private parks and, most importantly, the funding institution.
LeWiBo helps the project with the following activities:
- Teachers training,
- Environmental education theory in classroom for all students
- Children's nature trips for some classes to the National Parks (Marojejy and Anjanahary-be Sud) and to private park
- Planting trees in the school land around or land of state then needed collaboration with local authorities.
Teachers training:
Giving the basic of environmental skills to the teachers at elementary schools and provide needed materials and tools. The reason is that they can continue to teach always about environment to their students at school.
It is possible also the collaboration between CURSA students (in third year) from Science department to help elementary school teachers.
Nature trip:
The aim is to select 4 students from one class (fourth year in elementary school) from each school. Those 60 students will be divided in two groups, one group go to Marojejy and the other in Anjanahari-be Sud every year.
The students in third year (elementary school) can go to the Private Park which is close to the city.
Planting trees:
After learning about plant, the student should plant trees and giving them a training to look after of their plantations. We already have a collaboration of institution can be providing free seedlings in Antalaha (Graine de vie) and Sambava (Direction of forest in SAVA region), only the transport is the issue.