Born Free / Shamwari Education Blog
by Chritine LeRoux, Education Manager
I can’t believe that I am already writing my blog for September…where is this year running to! It is has been a super busy and fun filled month! Spring is in the air and the reserve is looking more beautiful than ever! I know I put in some pics of the reserve in my last blog but the flowers just keep getting better so I had to share some more pics! Here are some photos of our Jean Byrd Centre taken by one of our Born Free Holiday Group guests, Ian Carter:
- The Jean Byrd Centre
- Brutus, our French lion, rescued in 2008
Well along with spring day (1st September) we also celebrate National Arbour Week (1st – 7th September 2011) in South Africa and this year we went large. We celebrated it at our Eco-schools (see Eco-Schools section) and at our Julie Ward Centre. On 1st September 2011 we set off Arbour Week celebrations by planting a tree at our centre with Westering High School.
- Westering High
We also gave a spekboom sapling (spekboom is an indigenous tree synonymous with the Eastern Cape it uses hardly any water and is a great carbon sequestrator) to every school visiting us during Arbour Week to plant at their school.
- Harvest Christian School holding their spekboom
Our new truck is going like a dream and is being put to good use. We can now take 32 children per day so we are able to have more children come per month. This month we had 374 children visit us!
- Merryvale School for children with special needs standing by our new truck
Eco-Schools
ARBOUR DAY
We celebrated Arbour Week with all our Eco-Schools as well. WESSA and Engen assisted us in hosting a celebration in Paterson and Alicedale. Engen sponsored 20 trees, spades, watering cans and teacher resources based on forests for all our schools. Here are some photos of the event held at Hendrik Kanise Combined School.
Rhino Day
Well without a doubt our highlight of the month was National Rhino Day on 22/09/2011. We celebrated it last year too but this year it was huge…and much more challenging. The aim of Rhino Day is to create awareness about rhino poaching and make as much noise as possible. All the schools in Paterson participated by making posters and the Shamwari anti-poaching unit and rangers came and showed their support. We even had people from Addo National Park come and join in. So at 13:00 we marched down the streets of Paterson with our posters making as much noise as possible!!!
There were about 1000 children of all ages there and the challenging part was that there were hardly any teachers as they all had to attend a meeting! Well thanks to the World Wide Experience Volunteers who came to my rescue! Each volunteer adopted a class from the primary school and was a teacher for a day and I must say they were great! They made posters with the children in the morning before the event and then led their group at the parade. I wonder who had more fun, the volunteers or the children? Here are some photos:
- Making posters with the children at Moreson Primary School
- Volunteers round up the troups and head out to start the parade
- Marching down the Paterson streets
- The winning poster
Worm Farm
Well now that the WWE volunteers are well acquainted with worm farms and how they work, we were able to move into phase 2 of the project; putting them up at schools. This month they volunteers helped me to put one up at Sandisulwazi High School and they gave the school instructions on how to care for it. Here are the pics of the volunteers making a worm farm at the school:
- Khaya Khulu Primary School in Paterson are fast becoming gardening experts. Just look at their impressive spinach crop. Vegetables grown at school are used in the kitchen for learner meals.
FGASA Workshop
Well the exams have been postponed to 7 November 2011 (much to the relief of the students). But I am still keeping them on their toes and we are still having sessions to help them prepare for their exams. We are all holding thumbs that they will pass!
World Wide Experience Volunteers
Well other than helping me with my Eco-Schools projects I have been doing a few other things with the volunteers too. I did a biomes (vegetation types) of Shamwari and South Africa with them to give them a bit of an overview. We purchased 50 spekboom saplings from their tree nursery which was used for local and visiting schools during Arbour Week.
I hope to upgrade our Julie Ward Centre a bit by adding a few things in the garden. I have few things in mind such as a medicinal garden, permaculture garden and bird hut. I have roped the students in to help me and this month we have started with the medicinal garden…will add pics as soon as garden starts to take shape. We have between 300 and 500 learners visit our centre every month and we hoping to enhance their educational experience by adding these aspects to our centre. The goal of the medicinal garden is to show learners the importance of biodiversity and conserving indigenous plants as they are very useful to us. The permaculture garden will be on a very small scale but will show learners how to grow vegetables in an environmentally friendly way using natural process to your benefit.
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