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Community Awareness Programmes
The purpose of community
awareness programmes is to bring
positive attitudinal changes in
those who share the Snow leopard
habitat. The programme has five
major components, which are given
below:
Teacher trainings:
|
Bonfire
at Alma Mater school |
Provided training
to 26 teachers from 13 schools in
the workshops. The primary objective
of the workshop was to sensitise
and train the teachers to initiate
Snow leopard conservation activities
in their schools. A quarterly work
plan has been developed to integrate
Snow leopard conservation activities
in their ongoing school programmes.
Refresher courses are delivered
on a yearly basis, to keep them
abreast about the latest developments
in environmental education and techniques.
Nature
clubs:
Set up in schools in order to provide
an informal but organised platform
for environmental education activities.
Keeping this in view, thirteen nature
clubs were established in Chitral
and Gilgit, with a membership of about
340 students. The members of these
clubs have been exposed to different
activities such as quiz competitions,
essay writing, drawing, poster making,
storytelling and poetry competitions,
which will help to increase their
knowledge about nature in general
and the Snow leopard in particular.
Material
development:
The Snow Leopard Project has developed
colourful booklets, brochures, pin
badges, posters and wall charts to
convey the Snow leopard conservation
message to the public in general,
and the custodian community in particular.
Education
and awareness strategy:
|
Prize
distribution Chitral |
To strengthen Snow leopard conservation
education activities, a Snow leopard
conservation education strategy
has been drafted. This is a comprehensive
document that covers all aspects
of conservation education e.g. threats
to the Snow leopard, target group
identification and messages with
an implementation mechanism. It
is expected that the strategy will
also provide basic guidelines to
all the range countries, to develop
a conservation education and communication
strategy for their own countries.
School twinning:
|
Bonfire
at Alma Mater school |
Alma Mater School, Peshawar,
was selected to work as a central
point between the schools of the
Snow leopard range and the schools
at Seattle, USA. In this regard
Nature club members are working
on different education and awareness
activities and are exposed to different
conservation problems of Pakistan
in genera,l and the Snow leopard
in particular. Once their capacity
is built, the selected school will
start sharing information with school
children of Chitral, before disseminating
to schools in USA.
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