Education for Sustainable Development in Mongolia

/ ©: WWF Mongolia
experience sharing meeting
© WWF Mongolia

WE work with 18 pilot schools

WE are:

• Conducting in-service trainings for teachers of pilot schools in the Altai-Sayan ecoregion and Amur-Heilong river basin to support the development and test locally relevant curricula within specific themes

• Organizing experience sharing meeting on annual basis among teachers and principals from pilot schools to provide a platform for discussion on how to develop and test locally relevant curricula, and to learn from ones experiences and best practices.

• Developing and testing specific curricula which integrate fresh water, forest, pasture, saiga, snowleopard, taimen conservation and their habitats.

• Developing and distributing methodological handbooks and audio-visual learning aids.



WE work with 32 school-based eco clubs

WE are

• Conducting trainings for eco club students to enhance club activity and support the clubs' sustainable future.

• Supporting initiatives by eco clubs.

• Organizing experience sharing meeting among eco clubs on annual basis.

• Encouraging eco clubs by selecting the best ones of the year.



SUMMARY REPORT OF SURVEY FINDINGS AND PROJECT ACHIEVEMENTS

Download here.survey_report.pdf

Youth support and engagement in conservation

WWF Mongolia gives greater attention to increasing and encouraging youth participation in the conservation activities and supports good initiatives of kids’ clubs. A small project submitted by students’ eco club of the Medical College in Gobi-Altai province was supported and successfully implemented within the area of 5 sums of Khovd and Gobi-Altai provinces. Totally 1500 people were involved in the project activity. The project focused on public awareness: preventing wildlife poaching, improving public legal knowledge on environmental, encouraging them to live in harmony with nature, and expounding negative impacts of environmental problems on human health. Furthermore, students appealed local people to live in a clean environment and organized public cleaning campaigns in each sum. In addition, one of the club members conducted a survey among local herders to identify illnesses which are fairly frequent and find out whether there’s a relationship between those illnesses and environmental problems. The analysis is now being elaborated and expected to be introduced in the Students’ Scientific Conference.
/ ©: WWF Mongolia
Totally 1500 people were involved in the project activity
© WWF Mongolia

Empowerment of kids for nature conservation

Last summer, 93 students from 10 kids’ clubs of Khovd, Gobi-Altai and Uvs aimags gathered together for summer training which was held in the resort of Khunkher PA, famous for its nature beauty and rich biodiversity.The aim of this summer camp was to provide an experience sharing platform for kids which is an essential aspect for further development and motivation. The camp programme covered multiple themes, including Earth in general, nature conservation concepts, impact of humans on nature, importance of internal and external communications, interrelationship between humans
and nature. The role of human dignity and personal characteristics such as honesty, sense of love and forgiveness was highlighted as important aspects.
/ ©: WWF Mongolia
93 students from 10 kids’ clubs of Khovd, Gobi-Altai and Uvs aimags gathered together for summer training
© WWF Mongolia

Saiga kids clubs are intensifying their activities

Within the Saiga conservation project activities, a training was conducted to support youth business initiatives and start up the cooperation among local communities, teachers and youth in nature conservation, especially in Saiga conservation. This training was held late January 2009 in the underlying soums of Saiga range and covered the issues of small scale business enrepreneurship, planning, cycle and wide range of possibilities. Kids clubs summarized and evaluated their activities and through intensive discussions came up with a new ideas to cooperate with locals.
/ ©: WWF Mongolia
Kids clubs summarized and evaluated their activities
© WWF Mongolia

Ecological trip along Khovd and Buyant river basin

Students of “Strawberry” eco club involved an ecological trip along Buyant river to Dorgon Hydropower station. The Buyant river basin council supported the trip to see and explore current situation of the river, water usage (irrigation etc), impact of development on environment and to share experiences with other eco clubs in Buyant, Myangad and Dorgon county. “We are really satisfied with the trip and got a lot of knowledge about
water ecosystem and human impact on the environment. Further we are going to cooperate with the Buyant river basin council to aware residents of Khovd town and call them to action.
/ ©: WWF mongolia
Students of “Strawberry” eco club involved an ecological trip along Buyant river
© WWF mongolia

Nature smiles children summer camp

An annual experience sharing event among the Eco Clubs of Altai - Sayan Ecoregion was held in June, 10-15 in Uvs province. About 160 students and teachers of 18 Eco Clubs were involved.The event aimed to let the Eco Clubs to share the achievements and lessons learned during last year to increase the nature loving while traveling and seeing a piece of Mongolia’s beautiful nature, to improve the knowledge of biodiversity and various ecosystems such as water, steppe-desert and mountain forest, to train the students how to make a primary bird, water and insect observation.The students had a lot of fun while doing all the activities such as hiking to the mountains, field research, and group discussions on different topics in three aspects of sustainable development and ecological games and the art contests. Movie time was one of the most attractive and interesting part of the event.

Schools will become a driving force for development of their county

Within objectives to support development and implementation of outreach initiatives by pilot schools for sustainable entrepreneurship activities the “Small scale business training” conducted within four pilot schools’ teachers and school managers (about 160 participants) in Khovd province. The training linked with methodology and practice work on how to develop environmental friendly small scale business plan. Participants were asked to determine business initiatives that are need for improvement of local development. Rooted on those business initiatives teachers developed their sample business plans. Linked with the training, a students’ handbook was developed. The handbook included step by step instruction on how to initiate the first interest and awareness that it is possible to start business activities which can improve living standards and environmental conservation in local areas.
/ ©: WWF Mongolia
Tree
© WWF Mongolia

The second training session on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) held in Khovd aimag

WWF Mongolia organized the second mobile training session on ESD in Khovd aimag from 24th to 28th November within the framework of Land of the Snow Leopards project activities. The first session (last September) focused on introducing the concept of ESD in some soums while in others the emphasis was on supporting further and deeper development towards ESD, especially in terms of connecting school work to the local communities.

This time, the training focused more on practical exercises as well as analysing the curricula developed by teachers, working on recommendations for their improvement.
For detailed report please click here

Capacity building of Kids Clubs’ teachers

As part of our policy to promote conservation through education, we deem important to focus on the intellectual investment to the teachers and kids clubs. WWF Mongolia was pioneering in supporting and piloting ESD approach in the country since 2004 and at the present time there are 25 kids clubs running in the Altai-Sayan Mongolia part. Upon the initiative of aimag’s Education Department, the capacity building training of 4 schools club teachers of Uvs province was held late September 2010 which enabled the participants to share experiences. Innovative approaches and streamlining the clubs activities was the main focus of discussions. Through focusing on children’s extra-curricular activities, we hope that this effort targeted to children will bring about a gradual change in the mindset of parents when they notice the positive change of their children.

/ ©: WWF Mongolia
teachers and kids
© WWF Mongolia

Building a future in which humans live in harmony with nature.

Photos and graphics © WWF or used with permission. Text available under a Creative Commons licence.