Girls ready for snorkelling!

The Chumbe Project aims at building environmental awareness in Zanzibar. Therefore, the Chumbe Education Program is a vital component that sponsors local school visits to the island, prepared through in-service teacher training workshops and the development of teaching aids.

As elsewhere in the region, school education in Zanzibar is based on rote learning of highly academic syllabi that have little relationship with the surrounding world. Though Zanzibar is a coral island, coral reef ecology is insufficiently covered in school syllabi. Formal education does not yet provide environmental information on marine issues, as revealed by an analysis of the syllabi of primary and secondary education (Riedmiller 1991, Riedmiller 1995).

Also extra-curricular activities, such as field excursions, are rarely organized. Very few children have a chance ever to visit coral reefs and coral-rag forests. This is also partly due to the fact that school children, and particularly girls, normally do not learn how to swim or snorkel.

More information on Chumbe's education program can be found from attached environmental education programme report June 2006 (PDF).

The "Chumbe Island Wish list 2009" can be found from attached link (DOC). 

Ranger Khamis with student

To help improve this situation, CHICOP has over the years conducted school excursions for secondary students and their teachers to Chumbe Island. Guided by our park rangers along the nature trails in the reef and the forest, the participating children benefit greatly from the insight they gain in Marine biology, Forest ecology and Environmental protection. The excursions are in cooperation with secondary schools in Zanzibar, and consist of one-day school trips to Chumbe Island that provide informal hands-on environmental education. At the same time these trips give accompanying teachers first insight in how to teach practical field based environmental education. In this country, teachers have not been trained for linking classroom teaching to field excursions and so this is a novel and innovative approach for all concerned.

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Mtende Group Photo

In 2001, our Chumbe Education Program developed to the extent that a module on "The Coral Reef", produced by CHICOP, was recognised by the Ministry of Education as an official teaching aid. The program was expanded to encompass Teacher Training workshops and evaluation seminars, where teachers were trained to link learning experiences with the Science syllabi in particular.

Since 2004 CHICOP has increased its outreach work within schools, which has so far proven to be extremely successful.  Not only have schools fully participated in the field excursions but have also shown great enthusiasm to undertake more field based, hands-on, extra-curricular learning back at the schools. One school in particular, Chukwani Secondary School (located directly opposite Chumbe island), has developed an Environment and Coral Reef Club as part of their participation in the Chumbe Island Education Programme.  The school has created an ‘environment day’ which takes place every Monday where students participate in environment related activities, e.g. litter picking, tree planting, composing songs and poems, designing posters, etc. CHICOP and the Ministry of Education will be working together to promote the development of Environment and Coral Clubs in all schools involved in the Chumbe programme, using Chukwani School as an excellent example.

Working with the Ministry, CHICOP is now developing modules following the initial format of "The Coral Reef Module" for subjects ranging from "Eco-tourism" to "Biodiversity, "Eco-technology" and "Conservation".  These modules are then being put together to form a teaching resource, available for all Secondary School teachers in Zanzibar, to advise and provide information about field based education with the ultimate aim to produce a Course Manual of exemplar teaching modules.  This will give teachers and students a concrete model on how to make classroom teaching more relevant to the environment, and create awareness on coral reefs and coral island ecology that is badly needed in Zanzibar.

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