Education Opportunities

Turtle butterfly images courtesy of Apolonio Mai at www.wildbze.com; Image of children courtesy of The Stella, flickr.com/photos/stella/stella/stella

Environmental Youth Education Program

Our environmental education program focuses on providing students with interactive, hands-on opportunities onsite at Wild Earth Stewardship Center as well as in their schools and communities to inspire empowerment and action for environmental stewardship.  We strive to create opportunities that celebrate Belize’s natural environment, culture, and community, and bolster the current education programs, making it easy for teachers to provide unique, exciting, interactive environmental learning opportunities for their students. 

Our education program is designed to engage children in service learning projects that allow them to develop critical thinking skills while simultaneously benefiting their environment and communities.  These school projects teach and encourage students to take up their own action projects such as creating a school or community garden, organizing trash pick up days, recycling endeavors, volunteering, etc., to help them develop conscientious approaches to carrying for and interacting in the world around them.

• Environmental Resource Kits for Teachers: Our resource kits provide teachers with resources that help their students creatively and interactively explore and learn more about the outdoor world around them.
• National Environmental Service Competition: Each year will focus on a unique topic and Wild Earth Stewardship Foundation will give scholarships and awards to individual and group student projects annually.
• Species Monitoring Projects: Students and their families can participate in our monitoring and species repopulation projects to help collect long-term data on the presence of mammals, reptiles, amphibians, birds, insects, and spiders.  This project is a part of our larger monitoring project at the center and enables us to include communities and schools in the collection, monitoring a wider range and diversity of areas, and most importantly include our communities in the process.
• School Gardens and Nursery Project:  Children who are poorly nourished suffer up to 160 days of illness each year. Poor nutrition plays a role in at least half of the 10.9 million child deaths each year--five million deaths.  Malnutrition magnifies the effect of every disease, including measles and malaria.[1]  School gardens can provide hands-on learning opportunities for children to learn about the biology of plant growth, while providing food for healthy lunches and snacks for children.  They encourage creative thinking and provide alternative activities for recess and before and after school.  School gardens can also create enterprise opportunities for children to sell their excess garden bounty to raise money for their garden fund, other school projects, or special events or field trips. 
• Hands-On Learning Opportunities at the Center:  We will coordinate with teachers to schedule group visits to the center to allow student groups to participate in onsite natural building, renewable energy and waste, and permaculture projects.