Since the creation of Chipangali one of the goals has been to provide educational material and be an educational facility for Bulawayo and its environs.
In early march Chipangali decided to take the program to the schools rather than the schools coming to us, this we have never done before and proved to be very successful
In March we started out by visiting the schools in the Western Suburbs, we took a few key animals with us and proceeded to educate the children on the different animals that we had with us.
Well the response was unbelievable, firstly was the extreme enthuiasm that the children showed, most kids had never been up close to a hedgehog or held a snake in there hands. Our first school the numbers of kids where over welming with us seeing over 2000 children in the first day.
We continued and continued day after day visiting as many schools as we could during the months of March and April and at the end we spoke to over 25000 children.
It became very apparent to me that the way in which we had been conducting our education program over the last 20 years had many flaws in it, and now was the time to change. We where teaching the correct schools that needed help and assitance not the private schools where we had been in the past.
The kids where dying to gain some knowledge no matter how small and insignificant it seeming to us the system was working.
It is now oue aim to see more and more schools over the next couple of months and take our out reach program to those that need it, this was very apparent by the response that we had.
I have included some pictures of the visits and one can only but see how these kids enjoyed and valued the experience
Kevin Wilson
Director
