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The
Roots and Shoots Programme
The
Roots and Shoots S.A. programme is an
environmental education initiative aimed
predominantly at young South Africans to whom
their country’s rich natural heritage has
largely been inaccessible – for both economic
and social-political reasons. Programmes and
courses have been designed to stimulate interest
and raise awareness about the environment and
important related issues. Prepared and presented
in an inclusive and holistic manner, the
programmes emphasise to schoolchildren the
importance of lateral thinking and
self-evaluation and the fact that every
individual can make a difference. Roots and
Shoots S.A. believes that the only truly
effective rout to sustainable environmental
practices is through instilling in children the
belief that each of them has something to offer.
The next essential step is to help them to
recognise and harness their individual
strengths. Through such a process, children are
encouraged and motivated to take decisive action
in order to make a positive difference to the
environment. The environmental learning
programmes are aimed at schoolchildren from the
ages of 4 to adult.
The primary aim of Roots and Shoots S.A. is to
create sensitive and relevant environmental
education within schools and communities. To
achieve this, the difference between
Environmental Education and Environmental
Studies needs to be highlighted; as to conflate
the two is to compromise the sustainability of
the projecr ethic. While Environmental Studies
tends, often somewhat dryly, to focus on a
classroom transfer of knowledge concerning
subjects such as biology, geography and science,
Environmental Education is far more holistic,
relevant and hands-on, and focuses on the
classroom transfer of knowledge concerning
subjects such as biology, geography and science,
Environmental Education is far more holistic,
relevant and hands-on, and focuses on the many
aspects of the relationships between people and
the environment.
In order to maximise the impact of the
programme, and ensure sustainability of
Environmental Education into the future, Roots
and Shoots S.A. believes that training and
empowering local teachers and facilitators to
effectively teach Envoronmental Educatuin is of
central importance. Therefore, teacher training
is an important element of the initiative (see
below).
Susan Slotar and Diane Sheard started their
involvement with Roots and Shoots S.A and the
Jane Goodall Institute in 2003. Both Sue and
Diane have had extensive experience in a broad
range of conservation and environmental fields.
Sue, having trained with ARC (now Wildcare), has
specialised in animal rehabilitation for the
last 15 years. Diane studied Nature Conservation
at Pretoria Technikon and conducted fieldwork in
the Namib Desert for one year and whilst in the
Kruger National Park, work with a literacy
programme sponsored by Goldfields for three
years before going to work with City Parks.
Sue and Dianemet at a Councils Environmental
Forum and began working together in
Environmental Education in Gauteng. They started
working with Roots and Shoots in 2003, focusing
on a range of activities including presenting
Environmental Education programmes at schools in
Gauteng and taking children on day-long
fieldtrips to nearby conservation areas.
Roots and Shoots S.A. activities include:
· Presentations to education establishments
from primary to tertiary level
· Formulation of projects for the various Roots
and Shoots S.A. groups that include the three
prongs – Animals, People and the Environment
· Outreach awareness programmes (where more
affluent schools are ‘twinned’ with less
affluent ones, and together create a project in
order to raise funds for a specific goal, such
as a new classroom. The emphasis is on sharing
and giving, on instilling in children the belief
that however poor the are, the still have
something to offer. This philosophy is central
to environmental education).
· Community projects (such as ‘clean-up’
initiatives. This is an important way of
building school-community relations, and begins
with eliciting how schoolchildren conceptualise
the term ‘community’)
· Field work (taking schoolchildren on
fieldwork trips to conservation areas so they
can have the all important experience of first
hand knowledge of the natural environment)
· Research projects (aiding schools to carry
out effective environmental research projects)
However, because of financial limitations, Roots
and Shoots S.S. has not been able to work with
less affluent schools to any meaningful extent.
They need funding if they are to be able to
extend their activities to disadvantaged
children living in townships. Needless to say,
it is township children who have been the most
excluded from South Africa’s natural heritage
and who are therefore most in need of
interventions such as the Roots and Shoots S.A.
programme.
Educational excursions have proven in the past
to be a powerful tool to stimulate effective
learning in children. Yet, particularly in
under-resourced township schools, financial
constraints and pressures have led to a fast
diminishing number of schools who able to afford
school tours. This has had a particularly
negative effect on the implementation of
Outcomes Based Education (OBE), which, since
1994, has become an increasingly important
element within the South African Education
system. OBE has proved to be a tremendous
challenge to teachers, especially in previously
disadvantaged areas, who have found that they
need all the help they can get to successfully
implement such policies.
The potential for disadvantaged learners to
derive enormous benefit from environmental
education excursions is the drive behind this
initiative, which has as its aim to find a
sponsor for the implementation of daytrips for
disadvantaged learners from townships in
Gauteng, and to implement workshops which will
help their teachers effectively teach
environmental education.
This Proposal Adresses the Following
· The implementation of a programme where Roots
and Shoots S.A. will take previously
disadvantaged schoolchildren from townships such
as Soweto and Alexandra on environmental
education excursions to conservation areas
within close proximity to Johannesburg.
· The establishment of a set of workshops to
train those schoolchildren’s teachers in
environmental education techniques and
strategies which are also central to the
successful implementation of OBE
· The training and empowerment of two
facilitators, including one from Soweto, who
will assist with the daytrips and workshops;
liase between Roots and Shoots S.A. and the
schools and conduct follow-up visits to the
target schools.
· Creating job opportunities for previously
disadvantaged people through small business
opportunities such as printing T-shirts,
constructing learning props, providing lunches
and transport services.
With these objectives in mind, Roots and Shoots
S.A. has certain Key Result Areas that steer the
design, development and implementation of the
programmes. These are highlighted in the table
below.
KEY RESULT AREAS
E.E and Life Skills
Roots and Shoots S.A will promote a conservation
ethic through education programmes that
represent the environment as integrating
dimensions of the biophysical, social, political
and economical contexts within which all people
live. The fieldtrips will play a vital role in
providing meaningful environmental learning and
life skills to equip the leaders of tomorrow
with the skills required to take action in their
own environments, which will lead to sustainable
development. Because of the diversity of methods
and its participatory and interdisciplinary
approach, Roots and Shoots S.A will provide an
effective vehicle for E.E. delivery.
Community Socio-Economic Empowerment
The Roots and Shoots S.A. programme will
contribute to addressing the socio-economic
inequalities that are still rife in South Africa
today by specifically focusing the programmes on
urban townships. Not only will there be a
‘trickle down’ effect as children take
environmental education concepts home with them,
but Roots and Shoots S.A. will also build
school-community relations through community
outreach initiatives. Furthermore Roots and
Shoots S.A. will provide economic opportunities
(outlined above) for small-scale commercial
entrepreneurs.
Skills Development
Roots and Shoots S.A. will hire and train two
Project Facilitators to liase with schools, help
with daytrips and conduct follow-up trips to the
schools to reinforce the learning from the field
excursions. The Roots and Shoots S.A. team will
share their wealth of experience and knowledge
in the field of environmental education with
township children’s teachers, through high
impact, tightly run workshops. Those teachers
will be empowered to sustain the impact of the
fieldtrips and ensure the success of
environmental education into the future.
FIELDTRIPS
Roots and Shoots S.A. Trips to Conservation
Areas
Because of the overwhelming success of their
work over the last two years, Roots and Shoots
S.A. has developed a comprehensive programme
which aims to target more of the less affluent
schools which cannot afford fieldtrips to
conservation areas. Roots and Shoots S.A.
believes that unless young people have direct,
hand on experience of the natural environment,
and the opportunity to develop a sense of
involvement in, ownership of and responsibility
for their natural heritage, they cannot be
expected to have its interests at heart. A
classroom-based knowledge of environmental
concerns without the practical experience of the
beauty and complexity of the natural environment
will not translate into appropriate choices or
effective action. Therefore, the Roots and
Shoots S.A. programme will provide young South
African township schoolchildren with an
unforgettable educational experience of a trip
into a conservation area. The trips, which have
a tight, carefully designed educational
structure, will, in most cases, be a first-time
point of access for these children to some of
our most prized national assets. The overall
objective of the trips is to educate children
about the importance and relevance of these
natural resources to their own lives.
Roots and Shoots S.A. requires funding to be
able to offer the following programme to
township children
· One daytrip to an area chosen for its rich,
diverse environmental and conservation merits.
These areas include Rietfontein Nature Reserve,
Woodlands Office Park Nature Reserve, Widrocke
and various other reserves within Gauteng. The
daytrips are flexible and comprise different
elements at each of the locations, depending on
the dominant ecosystems.
But a typical day would include:
· A focus group session where children are
taught to ‘think laterally’ and realise that
each of them has something to offer, no matter
how poor they may be. Depending on the age
group, they play carefully designed ‘games’
which teach them a broad variety of concepts
ranging from how ecosystems work to the central
role people play in environmental (un)
sustainability.
· A nature walk detailing the environmental
richness of the particular area, when children
have the opportunity for hands-on application of
the environmental concepts they have learnt.
· A creativity session where each child (and
teacher) makes a ‘take-home’ item such as a
clay pot, a grass mobile or a collage. By this
point they are better equipped to ‘ think for
themselves’, and the item they choose to make
reflects each individual’s inspiration from
the day’s experience. Taking home the item is
a wonderful means of providing each individual
with ‘ownership’ of what they have
experienced as well as giving them the
opportunity of sharing the day’s experiences
more fully when they go home.
The programme aims to achieve the following
objects
· Give underprivileged schoolchildren the
opportunity of a unique, unforgettable
environmental experience in a conservation area.
· Provide school children with a compressive,
practical base of environmental knowledge and
experience on which to build.
· Generate ideas and techniques for
accompanying teachers to continue applying back
in the classroom (this is in addition to the
intensive teacher training workshops outlined
below)
· Ensure the sustained impact of the daytrips
through follow-up trips to the schools. These
follow-up sessions will also provide invaluable
on-going support for the children’s teachers
· Train and empower two environmental educators
from disadvantaged backgrounds to act as
facilitators
· Develop prototypes for innovative
environmental education ‘games’ that will
have an immeasurability positive impact on
children’s learning experiences
TEACHER TRAINING
While day trips to conservation areas are
essential for stimulating children’s interest
as well as giving them a solid grounding in
environmental concepts and issues, it is common
sense that environmental education needs to be
ongoing and progressive. Therefore it is vital
that those children’s teachers are empowered
to effectively implement environmental education
on a day-to-day basis in their schools. Roots
and Shoots S.A. has developed the Teacher
Training Programme to ensure just such
continuity.
The programme is especially pertinent to the
2005 National Curriculum, which emphasises
environmental learning as a fundamental area of
concern. In accordance with the new Curriculum,
environmental learning needs to be fully
integrated into any and all teaching and
learning processes. This provides unprecedented
opportunities to enhance young South African’s
environmental literacy and, consequently,
increase the quality of their lives and those of
future generations to come. However, many
teachers, especially ones already over burned
with enormous teaching loads, have battled to
adapt to the change of thinking required if they
are to successfully implement holistic
environmental education concepts. The Roots and
Shoots S.A. Teacher Training Programme therefore
seeks to lend essential support to schools and
teachers who do not know how to effectively
apply Environmental Education programmes. In
this way, Roots and Shoots S.A. will help
teachers harness the wonderful possibilities
presented by the new Curriculum. In order to
bridge this gap between policy and practical
application, Roots and Shoots S.A. has designed
a high impact teacher training programme.
The programme is especially pertinent to the
2005 National Curriculum, which emphasises
environmental learning as a fundamental area of
concern. In accordance with the new Curriculum,
environmental learning needs to be fully
integrated into any and all teaching and
learning processes. This provides unprecedented
opportunities to enhance young South African’s
environmental literacy and, consequently,
increase the quality of their lives and those of
future generations to come. However, many
teachers, especially ones already overburdened
with enormous teaching loads, have battled to
adapt to the change of thinking required if they
are to successfully implement holistic
environmental education concepts. The Roots and
Shoots S.A. Teacher Training programme therefore
seeks to lend essential support to schools and
teachers who do not know how to effectively
apply Environmental Education programmes. In
this way, Roots and Shoots S.A. will help
teachers harness the wonderful possibilities
presented by the new Curriculum. In order to
bridge this gap between policy and practical
application, Roots and Shoots S.A. has designed
a high impact teacher training programme.
The programme comprises a one-day workshop
around environmental learning that will take
place in a conservation area such as one of the
above in the daytrips programme.
The Workshop will include:
· Focus group discussions designed to change
traditional teaching mindsets through eliciting
ideas of how to teach environmental education in
innovative, relevant, exiting ways
· A nature walk designed to both motivate
teachers and increase their environmental
knowledge
· A creative session where teachers are
encouraged to invent effective teaching props
and games with limited resources
· Delivery of appropriate supporting material
and resource packs for use in classrooms
· A question and answer session where teachers
can share their teaching experiences and, with
the aid of the facilitators, help each other to
think of strategies to overcome problems
Roots and Shoots S.A. will also make follow-up
trips to schools, in conjunction with the
daytrips programme, which will provide continued
support to the teachers and deliver
supplementary teaching aids and materials. Roots
and Shoots S.A. intends to offer follow-up
workshops at a later date.
The Programme aims to achieve the following
objectives
· Empower schoolteachers to drive environmental
literacy in their schools, which will also
ensure that Environmental Education for
schoolchildren is ongoing, not just a once off
trip.
· Build educational support provided to schools
and teachers around implementing new
environmental learning priorities outlined in
the 1995 Curriculum
· Provide school teachers with a wide range of
methods and strategies (and teaching resources)
which will enable them to ensure their
environmental teaching is relevant, innovative
and exciting for their students
· Focus on decreasing dependency on
unimaginative ‘traditional’ teaching methods
that frequently require books, manuals and so
on, which are not always available in less
affluent schools. Instead, teachers learn to
‘think laterally’ and effectively relay
concepts with the materials available to them.
This also makes environmental learning more
relevant to children.
PROJECT DELIVERABLES
The following sets of deliverables are
expected to be achieved through the support from
donors
· Set up the Roots ans Shoots S.A. programmes
– including training two facilitators;
designing and building innovative props;
selecting target schools (in collaboration with
City Parks); consolidating relationships with
conservation areas. The purpose of this
year-long project is to establish a model that
is capable of raising funds to ensure its
sustainability and outreach for many years
· Take 120 groups to conservation areas, hence
giving 3600 schoolchildren an unforgettable
experience and a solid grounding in
Environmental Education
· Run 24 teacher training workshops which will
empower over 960 school teachers to implement
innovative and sustainable
· Environmental education strategies on an
ongoing basis in their school
· Undertake 120 follow up visits to ensure
continued support to teachers and
schoolchildren. This is dependent on the
training of the facilitators in point 1 above.
Output One: Set-Up day trips to conservation
areas
Activity
1. To train and employ two facilitators
2. To design and build props
3. To select target schools and establish a
schedule for groups
4. To take approximately 3600 disadvantaged
schoolchildren to conservation areas
5. To buy a van in which to transport props and
materials
6. To design and/or acquire relevant and
meaningful environmental learning resource
materials
7. To make 120 follow up visits to schools
Output Two: Set-Up teacher training workshops
Activity
8. To select participants for teacher training
workshops
9. To run 24 teacher training workshops
10. To design innovative teaching technique and
resource packs
Implementation
The daytrips and workshops will take place
during the school terms right through the year.
The programmes can start within two months of
sufficient funding being secured. This would
give sufficient time for the recruitment and
training of the two project facilitators, and
for all the other necessary preparations to be
completed
BENEFITS TO SPONSORS
The Roots and Shoots S.A. initiative will see
the following benefits, amongst others, accrue
to sponsors through their investment in this
project
· The project would be an excellent long term
social investment as it has the capacity to
raise environmental awareness, as well as a
longer-term awareness of the importance of South
Africa’s natural heritage and the
corresponding need for sustainable development,
amongst a segment of South Africa’s population
that currently lives from day-to-day with little
opportunity access that heritage
· Through encouraging teachers and children to
take responsibility and act decisively, the
project has the potential to provide broad-based
social and environmental benefits to urban
townships that have previously been
characterised by exclusion from such benefits
· All T-shirts, transport vehicle and other
publicity materials created and used for the
project could carry the sponsor’s name/logo
· All materials, props, and games produced by
the initiative for Roots and Shoots S.A. school
trips and teacher training workshops could carry
the sponsor’s name/logo
· All press releases and media reports on the
project will note the donor’s details. The
sponsor can, of course, also develop and
implement it’s own publicity campaigns around
these investments, as other sponsors have done
successfully with other awareness raising and
educational investments to other projects
We are confident that the mix of ingredients in
this project – children, environmental
education and social development will create an
enormously favourable impact on previously
disadvantaged schools. What makes this
initiative particularly interesting from an
Environmental Education perspective is the
positive approach of hands–on, practical
teaching that makes learning fun, relevant and
inspiring both for children and teachers, rather
that the traditionally dry ‘transfer of
knowledge’ approaches that have been used in
Environmental Studies in the past. This is bound
to generate an enormously positive response from
schools, teachers and children, which will, in
turn, ensure the sustainability of the project
SUMMARY
Roots and Shoots S.A. will promote environmental
learning for disadvantaged urban township
children who would not otherwise be able to
afford the experience of an unforgettable
daytrip to a conservation area. The project will
empower teachers to effectively drive
environmental education in their schools. The
two interlinked programmes will have enormous
direct and indirect benefits on both the target
schools and their neighbourhoods
Potential donors will be able to benefit
enormously from the positive PR generated by
providing the resources to fund hands-on
environmental education to disadvantaged
township schoolchildren. The initial investment
required for the Roots and Shoots S.A. programme
to run for one year and target 3600
schoolchildren and 960 teachers from Gauteng is
approximately….
Budget
The illustrative budget below will enable the
project to, over a period of one year:
1. Design and implement integrated educational
experiences for school daytrips, as described
above, involving 3600 children and 120
accompanying teachers from schools in Gauteng.
This will include the distribution of relevant
resources and school follow-up programmes
2. Secure the services and enable the training
of two facilitators to help run the trips and
workshops, and as well as conduct follow up
visits to schools
3. Develop Course presentation Materials,
including props and games
4. Plan and implement the teacher training
workshops targeting 960 teachers
5. Design and deliver teacher resource packs
The budget is broken down by output. The purpose
of the breakdown is to show how the budget is
divided between outputs. It is also important to
remember that separate funding could be raised
to cover specific elements of the budget (for
example, a corporate sponsor might be found to
donate the vehicle and cover the costs of the
props and games, thus significantly decreasing
the initial capital outlay). This budget is
therefore meant to be used as a guideline for
planning purposes
OUTPUT 1: Day trips to conservation areas
Children Trips
Days 1
Nights 0
Learners 3600
Larner Group Size 30
Number of groups 120
Kids Teachers 120
Follow up trips per month 10
Working days per month for facilitators 20
Working days per year 240
Total months of project 12
Number of R&S S.A. facilitators required per
trip 2
Return km’s to venue 120
OUTPUT 2: Teacher training workshops
Teacher Trips
Days 1
Nights 0
Learners 960
Larner Group Size 40
Number of groups 24
Working days per month 2
Working days per year 24
Total months of project 12
Number of R&S S.A. facilitators required 2
Return km’s to venue 120 |
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