K6 Greg worked with an organization called Wildlife Alliance to conduct a high school student workshop and a community presentation in his community in Kampot Province.
Wildlife Alliance came to his site and presented about forest conservation and wildlife preservation in Cambodia. They have the only mobile, environmental education program in the country. They have powerpoint presentations, movies, games, and giveaways like t-shirts and books for your students and community members. The workshop and presentation were conducted in Khmer by Cambodian staff members of Wildlife Alliance. Their program was really interesting, engaging, and well-received.
Here is a description of their services that can be available to you and your community, school, or for your camp or workshop from Amy Van Nice, the point of contact for Wildlife Alliance:
Our visits are free but increasingly, especially for big events like Camp STAR, volunteers have been integrating a small amount into their budgets for our travel costs. I think the last two visits for these kinds of camps we were given $150 each time. This is of course most appreciated as it really helps offset our own costs, but it is not a requirement. We don’t want to burden the budgets or have the camps have to cut activities in order to afford us, so there is no set amount. Anything that can be given is wonderful and if nothing can be given towards our travel costs that is fine too. We always issue a Wildlife Alliance receipt for anything donated to us by Peace Corps.
In a nutshell we have 4 different activities that make up our program:
- First, we work with students and conduct wildlife lessons through an interactive PowerPoint presentation. These lessons are hands-on, informative, and fun. The lessons are followed by wildlife artwork, and then a round of wildlife-themed games. The presentation and games are adjusted to suit the ages that we are teaching (can be as young as 4 all the way up to elderly adults). We usually hold some sort of competition (such as art or during the games) and then a Q&A to test their new knowledge based on the lessons. They can win wildlife t-shirts, wildlife storybooks and coloring books, and games. We can also supply your library with some books and games too. These lessons and activities are about 2-3 hours. We can tailor the lessons to focus on a certain subject as well, though we always look at bigger picture themes and how they are all related.
- We also conduct teacher training. While it is called teacher training it is for any adults, including university students, community leaders etc, and it focuses on wildlife and habitat protection, pollution prevention, climate change, water and sanitation, and a few more subjects. The idea is that they will then disseminate the information to their neighbors and others. These trainings are usually 3 days (in the schools in rural areas) but for NGOs we can tailor the program to suit schedules, such as 1 or 2 days. In more urban areas we can usually cover all subjects in 1.5 days as the participants are generally more familiar with the concepts.
- We conduct Community Night Shows in rural areas and these can attract 500 people, as it is often the only entertainment for miles around. These are a larger scale version of our wildlife lessons and engage community members and educate them on wildlife laws.
- Lastly, we conduct field trips to Phnom Tamao Wildlife Rescue Center to complement the classroom lessons. This is funding dependent and we are still waiting for our 2016 funding. Perhaps for these trips there could be cost share if you are interested in these trips, which are so much fun.
For more information, you can contact: Amy Van Nice at 023 211 604 or 092 725 423 vannice@wildlifealliance.org
To plan a workshop or activity, have your counterpart contact: Horn at 092 555 677 or 016 525 524
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