Matt Lindenberg, GCC founder, and Kate Vannelli, GCC Future Ranger Program Coordinator, facilitated a two-day conservation workshop with principals and life sciences teachers from four primary schools in the area.

Future Rangers, one of GCC’s main projects, aims to protect wildlife by bridging the gap between communities and conservation. The initiative is founded on the idea that education and opportunity creation are key to reducing poaching in wildlife-rich communities. The recent workshop conducted by GCC in partnership with Africa Foundation as well as the Southern African Wildlife College and for the organization.

The recent workshop showcased the Future Rangers 8th-grade curriculum. This curriculum provides life science teachers with the ability to conduct their science lessons through a conservation lens. It is aligned with the CAPS curriculum requirement which means that teachers do not have to do extra work in order to incorporate conservation key points into their lesson plans.

“GCC is working to develop an educational program that focuses on the needs of the communities that we’re serving. And so, to get this valuable input from stakeholders in the community and to set up a relationship of trust and receive consistent feedback from the users of this curriculum we’ve developed, we are really able to develop something that hopefully will have a positive impact in these areas,” says Vannelli.

The curriculum was received positively by the educators in attendance. The teachers and principals were more than willing to share their feedback regarding the curriculum. One principal, in particular, was willing to expend her school’s own resources, through printing reading materials, in order to involve other teachers as well as the students in GCC conservation efforts.

GCC is hopeful that the positive feedback from the educators during the workshop open doors for more schools to incorporate the Future Rangers program into their curriculum.