A successful first term for
CHEETA 2013
The education team has been hard at work in the
first term, and these are a few of the highlights for the year so far...
Just fewer than 3000 learners
have been touched by the outreach education programme already.
Yeats, our young
ambassador cheetah celebrates his 3rd birthday towards the end of
April. He is enjoying his visits, and shows great potential. You can stay in
touch with his antics on twitter @yeatscheetah
Byron is not ready to retire just yet, and is extremely
jealous of the fact that Yeats goes to schools too. Fortunately, he was able to
forget about his woes for a while by visiting some ladies in Lover’s Lane, and
of course, did all he could to save his species while up in the lane. Byron
does have a number of friends on Facebook, and if you are not already one of
his friends, hook up with him today.
Sagira – our Egyptian vulture ambassador:
From this...
to....
Sagira is a
hand-reared Egyptian Vulture with a lot of attitude. She is still in training,
but
has visited an
outreach group of learners this year, and was very well received. She is a
very rare bird,
as these vultures are considered locally extinct as a breeding species in
South Africa. We
are offering a critically endangered species presentation as a new option
to schools, where we deal with wild dogs and
vultures. Sagira and Jedi (our Anatolian
ambassador) come
along to visit the learners.
To bridge the
gap in rural areas, Jedi doubles up as an Anatolian ambassador, and as a
cuddly domestic dog. As part of our Cheetah
Challenge visits, we are including a domestic
animal presentation,
to encourage learners to form bonds with their pets, and give them
tips on how to
make sure the animals are healthy and happy. Being a large dog, he is quite
intimidating at
first, but eventually all the learners insist on giving him a good cuddle.
Our Cheetah Challenge programme encompassing
social upliftment combined with a conservation message is going very well,
and the project is mainly taking place at Boikanyo Primary school, as well as
at Rearabilwe place of safety (both
in Ga-rankuwa).
Overleigh St.
Mary’s in England had a skype chat with our education team, and unfortunately
they had video issues, so we
could only have a voice call, but they have sponsored a visit to
underprivileged school. We can use skype, Google
talk or facebook video chat from one of our ambassador cheetah’s camps, and
this is a fun way for schools from
a far to support our education programme.
During the
school holidays, we had a pilot holiday programme held off-site in Pretoria,
together with Eco-Pilots. It was
very well received, and we hope to be able to hold more of these holiday
programmes in a city near your soon.
Don’t forget, we also hold the holiday programme on site!
For further
information about our outreach education programme, or to invite us to your school or
facility, please contact Rita at education@dewildt.co.za
012 504 9906/7/8 or 083 252 8848.
It was the first time that the children from Jedidiah had been exposed to wildlife, and got the opportunity to come up and stroke the birthday boy. There was just smiles and purrs all round, and we are very happy that the children got to spend the day with us.
