DAKTARI is a registered non-profit company located in South Africa close to the Kruger National Park. The program site is situated in a 600 hectares private game reserve. Our mission is to educate and inspire local children to value their environment and stimulate community development.
About the Program
The program is based in the middle of the bush. There is no electricity in the camp but we have solar power and Internet for computers. You will live in a family atmosphere and a beautiful area. You must be able to adapt to group life and to be away from the city.
Every Monday DAKTARI welcomes a new group of 8 local under-privileged children for a week and gives them the opportunity to discover, learn and become passionate about wildlife, conservation and their environmental heritage. The organization also supplements their school curriculum in English, math’s, sciences, geography, life skills and social issues.
The goal is to enable today’s local underprivileged children to eventually be able to secure good employment in nature reserves, thereby improving their future and quality of life.
Some of the children who attended to DAKTARI have created Eco Clubs in the villages where they come from. This gave us the idea to start a new program called the Outreach Program.
These two clubs are run once a week at the local high school where environmental and life skill lessons are taught to the students. The students can join voluntary and are of all ages. The lessons are after school from 2.30 until 4.00. The main reason to have these clubs is to give the students who have been to DAKTARI a chance to continue learning about the environment and keep developing themselves as independent people.
We have two eco-clubs at the moment, Rakgolokwane on Monday afternoon and Maahlamele on Tuesday afternoon. The rest of the week is used for community development, business creation, administration, social media, fundraising and preparing the lesson for next week.
The outreach manager is also visiting two crèches in the village of the Oaks (near Maahlamele school) on Tuesday mornings. We alternate every second week with the two crèches.
The idea is to let the program grow, not by taking on more eco-clubs but to improve the lives of the students by finding opportunities for their future. For example by assisting with bursaries to study or get employed in the Eco-Tourism field and/or to help the community toward development in green environment and/or eco-tourism access. This takes up a lot of time but the reward to guide students and/or the community is amazing.
Volunteers will be interacting with:
Purpose
Volunteers should manage the outreach programs including the twice-weekly Eco-Clubs, planning, teaching lessons and daily administration tasks, providing career guidance to students, organizing bookings for the home-stay families and supporting business creation in the local area.
Task 1: The Eco-Club
Task 2: Outreach Campaining
Task 3: Community Programs – Home-Stay Family
Task 4: Community Programs (waste management – Eco Business Creation)
Task 5: PR
Task 6: Multimedia
Institution: DAKTARI Bush School
Languages: English
Category Country: Community, Social Work
Services inclus: