Schools to benefit from uShaka outreach programme
Pupils from underprivileged schools will get to learn about the ocean and visit uShaka, thanks to funding from Lotto.
USHAKA Sea World marine educators, through support of National Lottery Development Trust Fund (NLDTF), have included an additional 79 schools to their outreach programme.
The programme, now in its 21st year, focuses on creating ocean awareness in no-fee schools in KwaZulu-Natal. The very welcome financial support from the NLDTF now means that another 9 480 learners in Grade 7 who might ordinarily never get to understand the marine environment, will get a peek at undersea wonders that might never have imagined.
The aim of the project is to give future generation an awareness and understanding of South African biodiversity, with particular emphasis on but not limited to the ocean, with a view to their protecting it going forward.
The two-fold programme entails both a classroom-based lesson at school and a visit to uShaka Sea World. This is followed by a school-based environmental project.
Marine educator, Sazi Sibisihas, has visited more than 15 000 learners over the past three years and believes that, without bringing the learners to uShaka Marine World, the lessons he conducts at schools could be forgotten.
“When I see learners from rural and peri-urban schools walking through the aquarium with wonder and amazement in their eyes, I know that, when they get back school, the questions they will ask will be very different from those asked in lessons at school. The realisation that the ocean is part of their world and not some foreign concept belonging to strange people is deepened as they pass one aquarium window after another. Their feeling of connectedness is almost tangible,” he said.
