WESSA Annual Review 2020

OUR PHILOSOPHY

The philosophy of the WESSA Schools programme has always been informed and underpinned by the understanding of the environment as a multi-dimensional concept as depicted by the diagram below:

Democracy

Align projects to relevant local and global agendas

Mobilising public/private participation in addressing socio-economic issues – mitigating impacts on ecological infrastructure and human life

Peace

Development

Support teaching and learning in schools and communities through action learning

Empowering Youth and developing skills to become enviropreneurs in sustaining livelihoods

Conservation

Web of life

ENVIRONMENT - The foundation of our work

The WESSA School Programme’s approach is based on our understanding that the environment is multidimensional and consists of four key dimensions that are interconnected with one another . These four dimensions are the biophysical, social, political and economic . Hence the analogy of the spider web in the centre of the diagram showing that every part of the web is connected to every other part, making the web both complex and powerful. If any part is weakened or disconnected, the overall value and strength of the web is severely compromised. The environment from this perspective, the web of life, forms the foundation or basis of all the work we do in our offering of Environmental Education through the WESSA Schools Programme across South Africa. Thus, linking the environment with education, responding to our mandate and aligning with our strapline “People Caring for the Earth”. This perspective makes it possible for us to respond

to the relevance, impact and sustainability issues associated with the active learning framework and project-based learning approach of our projects and programmes. Not only do we use this framework in our projects through teaching and active learning processes in schools, but also with stakeholders and funders as a marketing, evaluation and information tool to explain the fundamental underpinning and rationale for our work. This contextual framework also reflects our understanding of working with people in schools and communities from diverse perspectives across South Africa. Through our various programmes we highlight or focus on an environmental issue in a particular context and theme related to the natural environment such as water, biodiversity, energy, waste, climate change, etc. and develop an education programme to highlight the interconnections between the different dimensions as mentioned above.

24 Annual Review 2019-2020