The CITW Zambezi team is particularly excited for the term ahead for all 12 of our Victoria Falls-based Eco-Clubs – all thanks to our most recent collaboration with Elephant Crew (eleCREW).
eleCREW was formed in 2017 as a non-profit charitable trust. Their elephants were all formerly owned by tourism operators, who used them solely for commercial tourism and elephant-back safaris. In 2017, the herd of elephants made its way to the 3,000-hectare Jafuta Private Game Reserve under the guidance of animal welfare experts – and the ground-breaking educational awareness programme “Through the Eyes of an Elephant” was born.
This unique elephant-awareness activity starts with an entertaining and immersive talk from eleCREW team, after which the Eco-Club members are given the opportunity to get up close, meet the elephants and watch their behaviour in their natural environment. The students and our Eco-Mentors are taught the many challenges that elephants face in the wild, and are made aware of what they can do to help.
As well as this, one of the most important aspects of the whole interaction is that the students are introduced to humane and non-lethal techniques of human-elephant conflict mitigation. More often than not, our Eco-Club members and Eco-Mentors have had negative first-hand experiences with elephants due to the nature of the areas where they live. With this in mind, the main aim of the educational interaction seeks to introduce our students and mentors to a new way of achieving a more peaceful coexistence.
So far, two of our Victoria Falls-based Eco-Clubs have visited the eleCREW team and experienced this highly important educational activity. The remaining 10 will take turns to visit every Friday afternoon throughout the entire second term of school.
CITW hopes that these interactions will act as a gateway to changing attitudes within our members, allowing them to think of elephants as important sentient beings, rather than simply enormous, dangerous crop raiders.
We believe this change in attitude will lead to the adoption of innovative and sustainable coexistence solutions, such as better farming methods and chilli-brick deployment to protect crops.
