The Environmental Education Strategic Planning Workshop Report is now available for download.
This report is focused on the outcomes of the first Youth Environmental Education Workshop held at the Environmental Education Centre at the Garden Route Botanical Gardens on the 26th of February 2020. These notes document the outcomes of the workshop which was primarily aimed at mapping the ‘education landscape’ and identifying gaps and needs in youth environmental education in the Garden Route Biosphere Reserve domain.
The first workshop invited participants to introduce their organisation and briefly share with the group their education focus current activities. A second open discussion was facilitated around the gaps and needs in youth environmental education in the Garden Route Biosphere Reserve.
A post-workshop survey eliciting participants’ feedback on the workshop yielded positive responses. Comments included:
• Informative, inspiring and “eye opening” • Good, necessary and important! • Productive • Well-structured and well conducted.
Many participants commented on the fair and open discussion where the diverse stakeholders were given a platform to share their programs and exchange ideas. However, one participant offered constructive criticism and wrote, “some key players were absent” and added that some topics were somewhat broad and irrelevant. The participant stated that for future discussions it would be best to narrow the focus in order to be more productive. Other participants highlighted the need to get teachers involved and that the time-slot for the workshop inhibited their participation.
Workshop outcomes – including opportunities and challenges – will need to be revisited given the COVID-19 impacts on education spaces.