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Endangered Wildlife Trust
Province: Gauteng

Samantha Brown

What specific projects, campaigns or aspects of your organisation will you promote at the 2006 Giving Exchange?

The Conservation Leadership Group (CLG), a working group of the Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT), is dedicated to ensuring the future of biodiversity conservation in Southern Africa by capacitating and empowering future conservation leaders and role-models within and from disadvantaged communities.
 
It has successfully achieved this by harnessing biodiversity as an upliftment tool while simultaneously promoting its conservation through several community based projects since 1996. The Conservation Leadership Group is a shining example of our work being about more than money. This project draws in a wide variety of stakeholders from community leaders, business, academic institutions, government and young people from learners to those at tertiary level. It is all about making environmental issues part of everyday community life, creating role-models, creating employment opportunities and securing a future for biodiversity for future generations. 
 
The second programme to be profiled is the membership programme. Apart from income generation, this programme aims to build the Endangered Wildlife Trust conservation
community to unite on issues of conservation importance and how to lead greener lives. Tools used include our website, magazines, electronic newsletters and the media.
 
The final aspect of our work we would profile is the work carried out by our Law and Policy Working Group, in particular their development of an Environmenatal Impact Assessment Toolkit for Civil Society. In order to conduct a successful Environmental Impact Assessment process, it is imperative that a  comprehensive public participation process is followed. However, concerns are often raised about both the transparency of Environmental Impact Assessment processes and the understanding and related quality of participation by interested and affected parties.
 
In particular, interested and affected parties are often frustrated and barred from adequate participation by their lack of understanding of the Environmental Impact Assessment process, ignorance of their legal rights and the legal obligations of developers, their inability to access relevant information, their ignorance of and thus frequent missing of legal timelines and a cumulative uncoordinated and ineffective reactive approach to development planning.
 
The Law and Policy Working Group has developed a practical, user-friendly  Environmental Impact Assessment Toolkit that provides clear outlines of key Environmental Impact Assessment processes and offers clear assistance and guidance to interested and affected parties across a broad range of stakeholder perspectives.


How will your organisation fit and help promote the theme 'giving is not just about money' at the 2006 Giving Exchange?

The Endangered Wildlife Trust receives a tremendous amount of non-financial support from individuals and corporates and it is largely thanks to our policy of trying to secure gifts-in-kind and probono professional services and advice that we are able to keep our running costs to a minimum. The three projects we have chosen to profile all have some excellent examples of how we have harnassed elements other than donations to progress our work.


Define the Wishlists that your organisation will be promoting at the Giving Exchange.

  • Camera (digital or SLR) to use on the Wild Dog programme
  • Gas bottle with cooking attachments for field workers
  • Small gas oven
  • VHS video recorder
  • A chest freezer for the Poison Working Group KwaZulu Natal office, for storage of in-transit poisoned specimens 
  • Two data-projectors for Poison Working Group field staff 
  • Interior paint in natural colour or colours suitable for offices
  • Office carpeting needed wall to wall for passages and reception area of head office
  • Rugs and carpets to put over flooring
  • Digital camera and underwater housing for Marine and Coastal Working Group
  • Laptop for Marine and Coastal Working Group
  • 1 screen or room divider of around 2m for an office
  • Paper shredder 
  • High back office chair
  • PA System
  • Hi-Fi System
  • Bicycles for field workers in rural areas
  • 3 Laser jet printers, 2 black and 1 colour – preferably 1 that can handle high volumes of printing
  • Washing machine
  • White boards


Define the volunteer requests that your organisation will be promoting at the Giving Exchange.

Assistance from financial experts to help develop model to increase investment in Endangered Wildlife Foundation, librarians to guide and update management of Endangered Wildlife Trust Library and volunteers to contribute to bird counts and censuses.


Define your Do It Day proposal.

The Endangered Wildlife Trust – Computer skills marathon
Activities - The Conservation Leadership Group aims to inspire environmental awareness and responsibility in the previously disadvantaged communities of Southern Africa to capacitate aspiring conservationists from these communities through innovative, high impact mentorship, training and education programmes and to effectively mobilise these future leaders in conservation through exposure to experiential training and employment opportunities.
 
For 10 years the Conservation Leadership Group has been empowering young black conservationists by providing them with academic and practical training, giving them access to basic life skills such as driving skills and English skills. However, one of the greatest barriers to them entering the marketplace is a lack of basic computer skills. The Endangered Wildlife Trust would like to host a computer training marathon for the 15 students currently enrolled in the Conservation Leadership Groups' Conservation Training Programme to ensure that they have the basic skills required to operate in the Microsoft Office environment and do basic internet browsing and emailing.
 
Objectives :
  • This project aims to give the students enrolled in the Conservation Leadership Group’s Conservation Training Programme and the Leadership Training Programme an advantage above other applicants for conservation positions by providing them with basic computer skills in Microsoft Word, Excel, internet browsing and emailing.
  • To enhance on-the-job performance and productivity
  • Improve efficiency of graduates  by teaching them  optimum methods of solving technological issues
  • To enable graduates to keep up with changing technology

The training can take place at the Endangered Wildlife Trust’s head office or at an outside computer training facility.To ensure the long term sustainability of the training provided by the Conservation Leadership Group, it is vital that students are able to secure employment once they have graduated. Without basic computer skills, many of these students will not be able to successfully join the workforce. 

Students who have graduated from this programme and have secured employment have increased their income by some 600%. This impacts not only on their quality of life, but also on the quality of life of their direct families and communities. From the Endangered Wildlife Trust’s perspective, having motivated, qualified, passionate young leaders in place to take conservation activities forward into the future, will result in good policies being formulated and implemented to conserve Southern Africa’s biodiversity. A win-win situation.
 
Beneficiaries of the Conservation Leadership Group are exclusively drawn from previously disadvantaged communities.  Many come from rural areas, often bordering on conservation areas. On graduating, many of them return to their homes and take up positions in their communities.
 
Key Challenge in hosting a “Do it Day’ event :
  • The students will all have to be able to come to the Endangered Wildlife Trust's offices for training
  • Having enough trainers who will have the patience to work with students who are not very technologically experienced
  • Having sufficient machines for the students to train on, a possibility would be for volunteers to use their own laptops to do the training
Volunteer requirements - Volunteers must be experienced computer users who would be able to impart basic skills patiently and effectively. We would require 3 to 15 volunteers, training can either take place in groups or one-on-one. Ideally,  volunteers would have laptop computers. Would require 8 hours to provide basic training.


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