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CHILDREN’S ENVIRONMENTAL AWARENESS AWARD
The Giraffe Center of the African Fund for Endangered Wildlife is a non-profit organization whose objectives are to educate the youth in Kenya on the importance of conserving wildlife and the environment. This year, the Giraffe Center celebrates 25 years in conservation education.
The Giraffe Center has long been one of our major distribution partners, using our educational films as teaching tools to great effect.
Each year, they show our educational films about diverse conservation and environmental issues to over 165,000 children and adults, as follows:
Organized School Trips:……………60,000 children per year
Underprivileged Children’s Groups:……..5,000 children per year
Teacher Training Programs:………………225 teachers per year
Domestic and International Tourists:………>100,000 visitors per year
As part of their education program, the Center organizes an annual National Environmental Awareness Competition, whereby children participate in essay writing, artwork and photography, giving them the opportunity to analyze the environmental issues affecting them on a daily basis, and to suggest possible solutions to problems.
This year’s competition theme is “Environmental Conservation Education”, culminating in a prize-giving day on 6th June 2008, to coincide with World Environmental Week.
The African Environmental Film Foundation has been asked to contribute 150 DVDs of our films as prizes for the participating students (many thousands of children will compete).
150 winners and runners-up from different categories and age groups, representing students from across Kenya, each going back home to their village with a copy of an educational film which their whole community will see, have the potential to spread the conservation message contained therein to every corner of the country.
Despite the cost of these DVD copies being relatively small, it is nonetheless an expenditure for which we have not budgeted. Therefore, if we are to be able to contribute the DVDs as prizes, we need to raise the money to produce the copies.
Please help if you can:
The cost of producing each DVD copy (which has to be done in UK as no high quality replication facilities exist yet in East Africa), including the cost of the cover and freight from UK to Kenya is $7.50.
Producing 150 DVD copies (incorporating a selection from our 12 available films) will cost a total of $1,125.
Donations can be made online here, or by check made out to the ‘African Environmental Film Foundation’ and sent to our Foundation offices in the USA, Kenya or UK. Please specify that your donation is for the Giraffe Center Award Partnership. Thank you.
For more information, you can download a copy of the Giraffe Center’s letter to us, requesting our participation in this initiative, you can visit the Giraffe Center website, and of course you can always contact me personally with any questions.
A heartfelt thank you for any help you can give…
150 DVDs of AEFF’s twelve educational films will constitute prizes…
9 Comments
Hey Tanya, you’re everywhere! Love your enthusiasm. Keep up the great work and lovely posts. Takes me to Afica, everytime. Thank you.
Thanks Theresa…I see you everywhere too…your enthusiasm must be infectious!
Tanya – Please accept my donation to help with the production costs for the DVD’s. The Giraffe Center is a great organization for the education of future Kenyan leaders on multi levels of conservation. I’m sure your DVD’s will be another great educational tool.
P.S. I meant to add how much I enjoy reading your posts and like so many others are a little green with envy in what you do and where you live :>)
Dana -
Thank you for your generosity – I know the kids who win the DVDs will be thrilled, and no doubt all the other kids will get to see them too…here in Africa, when there’s a film being shown, everyone wants to see it!
I agree with you that the Giraffe Center does a huge amount for environmental and conservation education in this country – as I mentioned in the main post, they show our educational films to over 165,000 people a year, in addition to all the other educational programs they run. Have you visited the Giraffe Center? You sound like you know it well.
Thanks also for the kind remarks about this blog…it is true we live in a wonderful place – through our work, we try to put something back, and to help keep the wild places of Africa as special as they are…
Tanya, yes I have visited the Center only two times, and the expressions on the Kenyan school children faces interacting with the giraffe’s are priceless. They definitely have a yearning to learn about their Country’s wildlife and the environment. Hopefully that desire will continue in their lives and possibly some of them will be able to make a difference in protecting what is their legacy. I have also seen, in the Mara, school class trips and the kids are overjoyed in seeing their first elephant, lion and other creatures. They are so excited!
I agree, Dana – it’s amazing to see how excited the kids get when given the chance to see wild animals – and it’s so important that opportunities for them to see and learn about their wildlife are increased – as you know, it’s such a unique national heritage, and plays such an integral part in the future health and prosperity of the country…
Tanya – How is the fund raising for the DVD’s coming?
Hello Dana – apologies for my absence here over the past couple of weeks – I’ve been traveling – I’m actually in New York at the moment for our Annual Board Meeting…
So far, in addition the $100 raised here on WildlifeDirect, we have received $100 via the Safaritalk.net forum and a further $200 via our own website – so we’re about a third of the way there.
As soon as I get my feet on the ground again, I’ll be updating the blog with our progress…
6 Trackbacks
[...] helping to support the work of the African Environmental Film Foundation. In line with our recent appeal, this week’s donations will be used to pay for prizes for the children participating in the [...]
[...] thought it was time for a quick update on the Appeal we launched for funding to cover the 150 educational DVDs to be used as prizes for the kids [...]
[...] had such a great response to our Appeal for DVD prizes for the kids in the environmental awareness competition, from our supporters here on [...]
[...] Thanks to the generosity of members here on Wildlife Direct, as well as members of the Safaritalk and Fodor’s forums, combined with donors contributing directly through our own website, we have now raised all the funds required for the prize appeal for the Giraffe Center environmental awards. [...]
[...] are attending prize giving at the Giraffe Center tomorrow, and will post photos here as soon as we can, showing the kids receiving the DVD prizes so [...]
[...] course, our Nairobi trip started with the prize giving at the Giraffe Center, which was celebrating 25 years in conservation in Kenya, making this year’s environmental [...]