Review by Adriaan Lucassen (5 EC)
The first educational project that I will be reviewing is the ISNAD Environmental Education Programme.
The ISNAD is the International Support Network for African Development. It is an NGO that focuses on green issues. It works with governments and local authorities and schools, but also students and researchers, in Africa to focus on various projects; the Environmental Education Programme is its main educational project.
The Environmental Education Programme (EEP) takes the form of an annual competition.
It invites teams of secondary school students across Africa to apply for this competition. Entering requires them to think of and design an environmental project. This can take many forms, such as planting trees but also outreaches to other schools to create environmental awareness. ISNAD then chooses a number of entered teams and matches them with experts to make their projects happen in real life. Their website lists a few projects that were realised, such as a team from a school in Kaduna, Nigeria that collected a lot of plastic waste in the area and recycled it into floorboards; they also did an outreach awareness campaign. A South African team planted 340 drought-resistant Spekboom plants in their area and used plastic waste to create the nursery beds for these plants. After the projects are realised, ISNAD picks another 3 of those for a monetary award.
This is a nice way to stimulate the creative minds of pupils. It also lets them think about environmental issues and the challenges that the planet faces and tries to make them think of (admittedly low-scale) solutions and ways to create awareness and a more positive space.
The programme also has some less appealing factors. It’d be good if such a competition could target anyone, not just those pupils, of a certain age, who are already lucky enough to be in school. Now, only secondary school pupils can enter, but promoting it across a wider range of people may provoke more ingenious solutions from across the continent. Also, the fact that there is an eventual monetary award may mean that people do it for the money rather than for the good cause.
I also have to draw attention to the fact that ISNAD is based in the Centre for Petroleum, Energy Economics and Law at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. This made me frown, mainly because of the word “Petroleum”. I looked into the courses that this Centre teaches, and there are only a few about green resources; fossil fuels seem to be on the programme more. This makes it feel like ISNAD can be an example of greenwashing, (whereby green activities are brought to the forefront to hide polluting activities) but it goes too far to accuse them of this here now. I cannot be sure of their motives, but the project is admirable.
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