Earlier this year, we were excited to announce our new partnerships in Kenya and Zimbabwe.
The three amazing organisations we are working with have, over the course of the last month, been training with our Community Developer, Sarah, in implementing our Youth Rangers Programme. Just this week, the directors and teams at each of the organisations have completed the training programme and are now ready to start teaching Youth Rangers in their communities.
The Guardians of the Forest Youth Rangers programme is designed to support and enable young people to learn about the importance of environment, conservation and animal welfare, empowering them to be champion’s. It increases employability skills and community engagement.
Applying a number of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the course has been incredibly well received, despite the set back of being delivered virtually. We’ve seen a number of physical activities taking place including group drumming sessions, recycling projects, tree hugging, drama and urban gardening.
We asked the directors what motivated them:
‘We are motivated by the negative impacts that we are seeing on our environment. With all this happening no one is taking the first step to involve children and youth to cultivate empathy and responsibility over nature, animals and human kind.
‘My major motivation was my love for animals and nature.
Also being a veterinary professional, I realized most of the people don’t value animals especially wild animals nor do they take care of the environment .
So you find a lot of injured or killed animals mostly wild animals as they are considered dangerous and harmful.
Also there is a lot of cutting down of trees either for timber or to develop/ farm in forest areas, this is why the wildlife animals and the forests are declining at a higher rate causing imbalance in the nature/ecosystem.
So I realised that if we can bring up the children who are conscious of taking care of animals and the environment we can save/protect the nature in the coming years.
My vision is to train the children and youth when they are still young so that we can raise a generation that is ready to protect and take care of the environment and animals including wildlife.’. -Mary
‘We are motivated by the negative impacts that we are seeing on our environment. With all this happening no one is taking the first step to involve children and youth to cultivate empathy and responsibility over nature, animals and human kind.
We envisage a biodiverse, animal friendly, empathetic and humane community that sees all living beings as equals.’. -Alfred
We can’t wait to share more from our amazing new partners, so keep watching over coming weeks! We will definitely be seeing more of them soon!