WILD BENEFITS – African Parks scholarship programme finally paying-off dividends
A scholarship programme that offers opportunities to young people around protected areas to pursue secondary and tertiary education supported by African Parks is paying off dividends now
LIWONDE, Malawi (Planet Defence) - An African Parks scholarship programme offering education opportunities to young people through provision of 100 scholarships to vulnerable children within 5 km radius of Liwonde National Park to achieve better education is now paying off dividends, Planet Defence has learnt and tracked some of the recipients.
The move is part of scaling up literacy levels among young people that live within the park peripheral to appreciate a need towards wildlife conservation that if well managed collectively, conservation can bring tangible benefits to surrounding communities.
According Mathias Elisa, Community Extension and Development Manager at Liwonde National Park fifty scholarships are offered to secondary school students, twenty-five are for students at universities level and another twenty-five are for vocational skills development through technical colleges.
Today, some of these beneficiaries are now on cloud nine now that they have graduated. Planet Defence tracked some of the grantees to appreciate the road they have travelled.
We tracked Sande Bakali, a Bachelor of Science in Hospitality Management who completed his programme at the Faculty of Tourism, Hospitality and Management Studies at Mzuzu University.
The 24-year-old young man, now a management trainee with Water Edge Boutique Hotel at Liwonde, graduated with an upper second-class degree says his education would have been very challenging without African Parks intervention.
“I was selected from Liwonde Community Day Secondary School, African Parks promised to settle my fees from first to final year. I was very excited and got the motivation after I received news. Most of my friends withdrew from college due to lack of fees. Right now, I have started to think of helping others too. I am also thinking of how I can repay back to Liwonde National Park,” an excited Bakali explained.
According to Bakali, the scholarship programme is energizing the surrounding communities. The villagers are now seeing the importance through support to their children, including those to secondary and technical colleges on top of provision of safe water through borehole drilling. This is giving ownership of the park to the people and also the responsibility to take care of wildlife species.
Bakali recommended to African Parks to mentor and monitor the scholars so that they can in turn play a role to help raise wildlife conservation and develop the spirit of ownership among young people to go out as champions once they graduate.
“I did research on green marketing practices in the hospitality industry in Malawi which I focused on how hospitality businesses can conduct themselves while protecting the environment. Efforts are underway to publish the findings. I suggest the strategies and recommendations made in this research be used in the conservation and eco-tourism ventures,” an enthusiastic Bakali revealed.
Planet Defence also tracked another female beneficiary Deborah Asima from Machinga selected to pursue a Bachelor of Science degree in Nursing and Midwifery at Kamuzu College of Health Science and Nurse and Midwifery.
Asima was astounded at the mammoth task to raise university fees although the news came as exciting to her family.
“I had a challenge, even though I was selected to the University, I didn’t have any support to enable me to realize my dream. Luckily, African Parks came to my rescue. Without them, I couldn’t have managed to finish my education but now I am now grateful. I am currently in Salima working at a private clinic,” a much-relieved Asima shared the good news.
Other than provision of scholarships African Parks has also facilitated educational visits for schools and wildlife clubs and communities around protected areas and provided three hundred desks in schools where learners have been sitting on the floor.
“We have conducted environmental talks to schools, constructed eight classroom blocks in schools around the protected area. More importantly, as part of gender empowerment we constructed a girl’s hostel at Malombe Secondary School,” says Elisa who champions community engagement at the park.
In trying to inculcate a reading culture, African Parks is supporting eighty-two primary schools with a program called reading around the park and nineteen schools with happy readers program.
Both programs promote reading culture among learners. Through the programme the charity organization is providing books and training teachers while highlighting the importance of education for more young people to increase literacy levels.
Through the scholarship says one education analyst in an interview African Parks is contributing to Malawi Vision 2063 whose slogan is an inclusively wealthy and self-reliant nation.
The use of the word 'inclusively' echoes the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal four, which seeks to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote life-long learning opportunities for all.