SAVE Kakamega Forest
Co-founder Ernest and instructor Evans evaluate student essays on forest conservation in 2016.
Co-founder Leonard and research partner Holly at an earth day event in 2019.
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SAVE is a conservation - educational organization local to the Kakamega Forest area of Kenya, and an acronym for Swift Action for Viable Environments. Ernest Shikanga, Leonard Likothio, and I co-founded SAVE in the summer of 2013.
As a foreigner, I focus my efforts in SAVE on 1) designing a 3-stage curriculum and 2) training teachers to implement it. The 3-day lesson series integrates principles of ecology and conservation with local knowledge of forest history and sustainable alternatives. The lesson series is freely available online in the PDF below. I train and learn from local volunteers to effectively teach the area's secondary school students, incorporating diagrams, activities, evaluations, and awards. My co-founder Ernest and I now communicate remotely as he continues to train teachers and grow the program. Today, students with high participation and essays of high merit are invited on a day tour of the forest, where they have the opportunity to meet the animals and experience the ecosystem they learn about first-hand. Although relatively local to it, many of these students are visiting the forest for their very first time. |
| save_3-day_lesson_series.pdf |