The Cape Leopard Trust is celebrating “Girls in Conservation” this women’s month by nurturing their dreams of working with and protecting wildlife.
Western Cape, South Africa (16 August 2022) – A group of high schoolers got the opportunity to work with the Cape Leopard Trust as part of the organisation’s ‘Girls in Conservation’ programme. These young ladies have successfully completed the programme this year. The Cape Leopard Trust is celebrating these incredible wildlife advocates for women’s month.
Sixteen young ladies from schools in the Grabouw and Villiersdorp areas were invited to join the programme. These areas are popular for leopard activity. One of the exciting parts of the programme included a 5-day camping trip to Franschhoek, where they got to focus on learning green skills like wildlife monitoring, husbandry and rehabilitation; entomology, taxonomy and marine biology; and sustainable food production.
Getting hands-on experience is vital in nurturing green skills and encouraging these young ladies to further their interests in future careers. The young ladies were also given a series of assignments which they completed with the help of Cape Leopard Trust educators. In teams of four, the young ladies needed to implement outreach projects within primary schools in both areas.
The young ladies visited the schools, prepared book reading and distributed copies too. The books are available in several South African languages as well as braille and South African sign language.
“The girls put on animated and lively presentations of the conservation-themed CLT children’s story ‘Footprints in the Fynbos’ to the young children, complete with face masks representing the characters! They also distributed 200 books in English, Afrikaans and isiXhosa to these ECD centres.”
The last assignment was to present a “Snare Aware” workshop at their own schools, inviting classmates to join in learning about the detrimental effects of snares and that they are an illegal hunting method.
“On completion of all the assignments, an informal award ceremony was held to celebrate these young “Eco Ambassadors” after successfully completing the Girls in Conservation programme. It was endearing to see the whole group coming together again to rekindle friendships made on the camp many months prior, and to excitedly discuss all they have learnt along the way.”
The programme has been a big success, and the young ladies are excited about what the future brings. You can find out more about the Cape Leopard Trust via the website here.
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