During the month of October, all 15 CITW Malawi Eco-Clubs were engaged in conducting interviews with field experts on their Changing the Lens on Conservation subjects.
The organisations included:
• African Parks – Liwonde (Wildlife conservation and eco-tourism stories/issues)
• Wilderness Safaris – Mvuu Camp (Eco-tourism and socio-economic)
• Forestry extension workers – Machinga, Balaka and Nkhata Bay (Afforestation and land degradation)
• Fisheries officers – Liwonde and Chintheche (Fish conservation and lake pollution)
• Root to Fruit – Chintheche (Deforestation and Afforestation)
• Ripple Africa – Chintheche (Fish conservation and Afforestation)
Phase 1 of the project has run from May this year to date, and many of the planned activities have now been completed.
Major accomplishments include:
• Teacher training in transformative writing and photography. Thirty-four teachers were trained.
• Orientating and training 300 children (the writers) from 15 primary schools (clustered into groups of five in three zones).
• Conducting a baseline survey involving 300 questionnaires.
• Purchasing 15 digital cameras.
• Training teachers and children to handle digital cameras, and how to take story-telling photos.
Phase one of this project concludes at the end of November 2021. At the end of the phase, the Top 45 stories submitted by the 300 children will be selected during a community celebration Open Day. Each zone will have an Open Day. The 45 stories will then go into Phase 2, which starts in January 2022.
All 34 teachers from the 15 participating primary schools completed their training two months ago. The topics included operating a digital camera and taking story-telling photos. This month, with the help of an expert photographer from ZODIAK Media House – Lilongwe, Luke Tembo, the teachers passed on the training to the 300 children.
Report by Symon Chibaka, CITW Malawi Programme Co-ordinator
Images © Alice Péretié
