Earth Education Programme

The project objectives are to:

• improve environmental education throughout Uganda by training and supplying primary and secondary teachers and community members with environmental knowledge, skills, and curricula designed to encourage behaviour change;
• assist teachers and the Ugandan school system to deliver environmental education curricula to 10,000 primary students and 400,000 secondary students over a three-year period; and
• carry out a series of “sensitisation” visits for local leaders and politicians in order to raise their awareness of environmental concerns and the efforts needed to resolve them.

The project is designed for primary students, secondary students and adults with the hope of increasing environmental awareness throughout Uganda at all levels.

• Primary School Programme : employs two teachers within four different districts. The teachers are responsible for taking the environmental education programme to eight different schools over a period of three years. Two hundred curriculum guidebooks were printed during the first three months of the project for primary school teachers to use for the environmental education programme. In addition, 10 000 student handbooks were produced to aid teachers in raising environmental awareness among primary school students. Only students in grade five participated in this programme, with the average class size being between 100-150 students. According to the organisers, at the end of the three years, the project hoped to have reached between 10 000-15 000 primary school students.
  
  

  The Ugandan districts involved in the primary school programme are:

  1. Masindi (Budongo Forest Reserve)
  2. Hoima (Bugoma Forest Reserve)
  3. Kabarole and Kamwenge (Kibale National Park)
  4. Bushenyi (Kalinzu & Kitomi-Kasyoha Forest Reserves)

  
  

  By focusing on these districts, JGI-Uganda aims to reach students and communities living adjacent to the forests supporting Uganda’s main chimpanzee populations.

• Secondary School Programme’s: the strategy is to educate students about the environment and resources that they share with local wildlife. A secondary school curriculum guide was developed for teachers. The guide aimed to help teachers to educate students about the ecology of the great apes, their distribution in Uganda, the important role the species’ play in forest ecosystems, and the threats to their survival. This guide is multidisciplinary, covering subjects such as geography, mathematics, English and social studies. The guide was designed to complement the Ugandan national curriculum and includes lessons that are presented in the national exams.
  
  

  During the second quarter of the second year of the programme, JGI conducted a Training of Trainers (TOT) workshop for 39 secondary school teachers. Teachers participating in these workshops were responsible for facilitating training workshops within their own districts. There were 156 workshops. A total of 3120 secondary school teachers were trained, and approximately 400 000 students received lessons from the curriculum guide.

• Community Education Programme: this component of the project aimed to educate community members and elders. According to the organisers, an understanding of the impact of human activity on endangered species and threatened habitat is urgently needed, particularly in those areas where chimpanzees live outside protected parks and reserves. The Adult Earth Education curriculum aims to help community members to understand the basic ecological processes, to identify how they impact on them, and lead them to taking actions to reduce their impact on their environment. This was implemented in the same four areas as the primary school programme.
  
  

  Each year, 15 communities within each area were covered, with approximately 50 members attending each course. According to the programme, this meant that approximately 9000 community members were reached. There were also sensitisation visits for local leaders and politicians. They were taken to see the projects on the ground and also to their local protected area in order to raise their awareness of the environmental issues and also the efforts needed to improve the situation. Four sensitisation visits were carried out each year, with an estimated ten participants.

Environment, Education.

According to the Jane Goodall Institute, intensive agricultural practices led to deforestation and, consequently, loss of critical habitat in Uganda. With the human population increasing at nearly three percent per annum, it was expected that deforestation would continue in the districts where the programme operates. It was critical, therefore, that Ugandans fully understand the medium- to long-term consequences of their practices. It was estimated that approximately 200 chimpanzees were living outside protected areas in Masindi and Hoima districts. Approximately 500 000 people reside in these two districts, where agriculture is the predominant economic activity.