A Community-based ESD programme

Sustainable villages is a concept that helps the communties to take reponsibility of their natural resources and also improve on their livelihoods as a form of community based natural reosurce management. Eight ESD villages are being established in 2013 with the youth playing a key role within the leadership structures of these villages. These villages play a big role in ensuring that we have an empowered civil society that promotes good governance, participation and accountability in managing resources.

Schools are very powerful partners with communities. Schools act as demonstration centres for tree nurseries and micro projects like apiculture woodlots and nutritional gardens. The nutritional gardens have had the impact of enabling communities to learn types of crops to grow and have balanced diets. The selling of produce from their gardens has also allowed communities to learn alternative sources of income that can improve their livelihoods and alleviate poverty. Close partnerships between schools and communities has also had the ripple effect of academic results improving.

East Africa

Schools are very powerful partners with communities. Schools act as demonstration centres for tree nurseries, micro projects like apiculture woodlots and nutritional gardens. This close partnership has led to reduced capital expenditure since schools like Olopikindongoe and Ndurio in Nandi and Trans Mara respectively have been able to construct new classrooms by harvesting trees from their woodlots established in the LVCCEP ESD project.

Schools are very powerful partners with communities. Schools act as demonstration centres for tree nurseries and micro projects like apiculture woodlots and nutritional gardens. The nutritional gardens have had the impact of enabling communities to learn types of crops to grow and have balanced diets. The selling of produce from their gardens has also allowed communities to learn alternative sources of income that can improve their livelihoods and alleviate poverty. Close partnerships between schools and communities has also had the ripple effect of academic results improving.

WWF in the Lake Victoria Basin has worked with over 30 community groups spread across Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda. The communities have been trained, through the use of ESD methodologies, on environmental conservation, and on setting up eco-friendly sustainable SMEs. WWF, together with partners on the ground, have established 9 ESD/Sustainability Communities guided by a framework for sustainable communities that includes a holistic approach and participation; a governance structure and follow up; education and learning; biodiversity conservation; and management.

Communities in the Lake Victoria Basin included in the ESD project improved livelihoods so that some house-holds that used to live on less than 1 US Dollar a day are now living on at least 3 USD Dollars a day.

In Lamu, like many other rural areas, schools host the think tanks of the community. For the communities WWF work with schools. The school teachers are the most educated people living in the villages. We have noted that in communities that have embraced their school as a center for learning, the community members begin to work on community development and gradual change is seen. For example, a women group in Kiwayuu, in which the majority of members cannot read or write, is assisted by school teachers in Kiwayuu primary school in some of their business work.
In Matangeni primary school, the head teacher is able to direct community development assistance to communities because of the relationship they have and because she believes in the community’s desire and need to develop.

Success stories

All the 78 households of the Kigende ESD village in Rwanda have energy saving stoves. This will reduce deforestation. The village members now all have clean water supply. They piped water from a spring from a hill to a central place and WWF supported the piping of the water. Members are now paying a minimal fee for the water to the local district to support the maintenance of the piped water supply.

Cameroon

Ecole Publique de Nsoung and Government High School Bangem provide excellent examples of school-community partnerships, with some parents providing spaces within their compounds for the establishment of the school piggery and poultry yard for the purpose of security. In Nsoung, parents have been providing additional training support to their children in caring for the pigs and in general piggery management.

This kind of response is in recognition of the role the school plays or can play in community transformation through the useful education given to children who grow up to become informed decision-makers, wise resource users, and, therefore, responsible members of the community. By developing ESD best practices, such as those mentioned above, which are eventually adopted by the host and surrounding communities, the ESD pilot schools play a critically important role in paving the way for the sustainable development of these communities.

Madagascar

The ESD program is helping to bring the schools out into the communities and the communities into the schools. Parents are encouraged to be more involved in their children’s schooling and are discovering the benefits that the program is providing for their children in terms of life values and skills. This has given meaning to education and more motivation for parents to be actively involved.

The schools are also impacting the communities. For example, the garden-showcase within St Paul secondary school in Ifanadiana allows the whole community to learn new agricultural techniques adequate for this region, such as micro-gardening, terrace gardening, and soil analysis and management. Moreover, students are increasingly motivated and yearning to be involved in community projects from which the community can benefit.

Indonesia

Villagers in Mekartani have long used wild plants growing in the marshes. These plants are used as raw material for the manufacture of crafts such as woven mats and baskets. Nowadays, people have replaced them with items made from plastic. But students and teachers have once again started to harvest water plants, making crafts and selling the products. The mothers in the village are now interested in the use of plants and want to learn more.