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Environment education holiday camps catching on |22 February 2018

“Demand for environment education holiday camps is on the increase,” says Jeannette Larue, the technical advisor for environment education in the Ministry of Environment, Energy and Climate Change (MEECC). 

She says that weeks, even months, before holidays, parents are calling to enroll their children in environment education holiday camps.  However, she explains, due to lack of resources, both human and financial, MEECC cannot enroll as many children as it would wish to.

“Environment education holiday camps involve a lot of outdoors activities, in nature, hands on activities, which require expertise and good supervision,” she explains. 

She says it also requires transportation, which take children on different sites for discovery learning, and the trips cost quite a lot.  There are very few indoor sessions which are mainly presentations from technical people with the aim of introducing participants on different topics, they then move outdoors to have a better understanding while exploring different sites and taking action to help protect the area, such as tree planting and clean ups. 

They also learn different outdoor skills which will help them better understand what they learn in the sessions, such as snorkelling, nature observation, surveys,  beach measurement, among others.

During the last holidays, the Eco-Warrior team had the opportunity to spend a week on La Digue.  This was a residential holiday camp, away from home.  It provided them with the opportunity to learn basic social skills, such as sharing space with children outside their family group; and individual personal responsible skills, such as their day to day personal duties, such as organising their clothes and toiletries, and other little skills which they may have depended on parents to do.

There were strict rules set early such as no mobile games and head phones during the day. They learned that there were other ways of enjoying themselves rather than just gadgets such as playing dominos at night, enjoying a picnic without loud music etc.

To ensure enough supervision due to lack of staff in the education section at MEECC, two parents took their annual leave to join the group. 

“We are so grateful for their participation and they contributed so much towards the success of the camping trip,” says Ms Larue. 

It also helped them to see and experience what we offer their children during holiday camps.

Once on La Digue participants visited different popular sites, such as Anse Source D’Argent, Grand Anse and Anse Severe. For many of them it was their first trip to this island.  They also witnessed a presentation of the environment management of the island, especially the Veuve Reserve.  They were excited to observe the endemic paradise flycatcher in their natural habitats.  To help boost the habitat of these rare species, they planted 70 endemic trees. 

They also learned about culture and traditional lifestyles by visiting L’Union Estate.  To most of them it was their first learning of the traditional procedures of getting coconut oil -- from collection of the nuts, going through the ‘kalorifer’, to the crushing of the copra and finally collection and bottling of the oil. 

The most exciting day was the trip to Aride Nature Reserve.  Though the sea was a bit choppy on that day, the kids had a great day on this ‘birdy’ island.  Coming close to white tailed tropic birds (payanke in Creole), having the rare endemic magpie robin as a member of guided tour groups, observing the unusual huge geckoes and millipedes made their rough seas trip all worthwhile.

In all the children had a great week on La Digue and have expressed their wish for more residential camping trips. 

These trips on other islands surely cost a lot, and the group are grateful to all their sponsors, especially MEECC and the Environment Trust Fund. 

Parents’ financial contribution towards the cost of the trip was much appreciated by the organisers. 

“We usually get a contribution from the Children’s Fund (CF) for our holiday camps, but when the National Assembly froze the fund’s allocated budget last year we had to cancel another holiday camp we had planned for the Corgate Estate children, but as for the Eco-Warriors, parents quickly came on board with a sponsored walk to help meet the costs,” Ms Larue says.   

She explains that they have a very supportive group of parents, who are also very much active and involved in activities organised. 

“Looks like the Eco-Warriors are motivating and sensitising their parents and other members of their family,” states Ms Larue. 

The group would also like to thank the school management team of La Digue for hosting them. MEECC donated flowering plants to the school during the camping trips.

Apart from the Eco-Warriors camp on La Digue there were other environment education holiday camps during the last holiday such as the Eco-School camping trips on Silhouette and Desroches organised by Ministry of Education, IDC, MEECC and Island Conservation Society.  Similar environment education holiday camps were also organised on Praslin by the Seychelles Islands Foundation and the Friends of Vallée De Mai.

“There is a remarkable interest and demand to get children to put away their gadgets and engage themselves in positive learning activities.  Environment education holiday camps can be one way of doing that,” says Ms Larue.

The accompanying photographs show some highlights of the children’s outing on La Digue.

 

Contributed

 

Caption:

 

Planting endemic trees in the Veuve Reserve

 

Close encounter with birds

 

Learning about coconut oil production

 

Sharing space at bedtime

 

Souvenir photo of visit to the Gran Kaz (traditional house) at L’Union Estate

 

Taking a breather on their tour of Aride

 

 

 

 

 

 

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