Environment – EASTERaction

WICD – climate change chronicles (Part 2)

We recently completed another round of workshops with Grade 10 learners, in partnership with Umkhumbane Schools Project in Cato Manor, Durban. Two WESSA youth educators joined us this time, hopefully we’ll work together in future.

Over three Saturday mornings, in August/September 2025, we worked through the next few units of the What I Can Do (WICD) About Climate Change edu-action programme.

Since the last workshop series in March was a while ago, we started with a refresher exercise. Instead of me (the facilitator) doing the talking, we split up the learners into small groups, and gave each group a print-out of one of the videos we watched previously, to refresh their memories.

The learners then presented the slides to the larger group and gave brief summaries of anything they had remembered. I reminded them that this was not school and that there was no evaluation, that they should not feel pressured or stressed, but just quickly walk us all through some of the highlights. This was a fun and highly entertaining, the learners were very enthusiastic.

Learners presenting a summary from the last workshop

Unit 7 “What does climate change look like”?

The video for this unit shows the many faces of climate change – changes in the weather, changes on land and in the oceans, changes in the frozen parts of the world, sea level rise. We all felt a bit depressed at the end. But everyone agreed when I said, “These things are happening anyway, whether we are aware of it or not. Myself, I prefer not to be ignorant of what is going on. I would rather know, because then I maybe do something about it, and also then I can adapt my life and not get caught by surprise.”

We then carried out two simple experiments about sea level rise caused by melting glaciers and warming oceans, and one about ocean acidification and the effect on calcium carbonate solubility.

Do melting sea ice and land ice both cause a rise in sea level? Marking the ‘sea level’.

Demonstrating that hot water takes up more space than cold water.

Do sea shells dissolve in acidic water? Checking the pH.

Unit 8 “Why should I care? How does climate change affect me?”

On the first day the learners went home with a questionnaire, to interview an older person in their household. They asked about any changes or disasters they had experienced during their lifetime.

On the second day, learners interviewed each other, in a mock TV show, talking about their family’s – or their own – experiences and opinions. “Who has family or friends who may not have heard about climate change? What could you say to them? How would you explain climate change to your granny?” I was blown away with the confidence and enthusiasm with which the learners threw themselves into this activity.

The results speak for themselves!

The Unit 8 video covers the many ways that climate change affects us as humans – our food systems, health and wellbeing, the economy – and how it can cause poverty, displacement and conflict. It explains how we depend on nature and how climate change threatens our entire society, often in complex ways.

While watching the video, learners listened out for facts that might answer the question: “Why did the Nobel Prize for Peace get awarded to people who spread knowledge about climate change? How could climate change disturb the peace, between individuals, communities or countries?”

Learners paired up to discuss this question, we collected ideas from the floor and discussed them in the big group. Responses included: communities or countries fight over scarce resources, such as food, wood or water; people fight with their governments over policies or unfair food allocations; activists fight with law enforcement; ‘false activists’ turn environmental causes into terrorism. Another two short videos, by international peace organizations, rounded off this section.

The learners’ responses were very insightful and thought-provoking.

Unit 11 “What can I do about climate change?”

Finally we get to the most important part: action. The interactive video highlights the top priorities, based on where the most greenhouse gases come from, and where action would therefore have the greatest ‘bang for buck’. It also talks about climate justice, an important topic for young people living in underprivileged conditions.

Unit 13 “Electricity”

The third day was devoted to the top action area: energy – more specifically, electricity. We started with a game called ‘Circuit Breaker’, where we passed ‘electrons’ from a ‘battery’ around a ‘circuit’. One person was the ‘switch’, another the ‘radio’, another a ‘resistor’. When things got out of hand, and ‘sparks’ started to fly, the ‘circuit breaker’ tripped, and the game had to be ‘reset’.

How fast can you make the ‘current’ flow?

Then we talked about electricity in the home: the distribution board, the electricity meter, different ways of purchasing electricity.

It’s easy to save electricity in the home, just by doing things slightly differently. Thereby we can reduce our energy carbon footprint as well as our monthly electricity bill. So how much power does it take to boil a cup of water – in a kettle? On a stove? In a microwave? We timed boiling water with different appliances, and converted the answers to kWh, grams of greenhouse gas emissions, and into Rands and cents. Then we cooked a pot of rice by wrapping it in a blanket.

Boiling water in a kettle used the least power.

A pot of rice, once boiled, can cook in a hotbox without further power.

On a personal note: I (Marlies) would like to thank Martha Bishai and her team at the Umkhumbane Schools Project – especially Precious, Nokwanda – from the bottom of my heart for their support and partnership. Years ago Martha invited me to engage their biodiversity group. Since then Martha’s encouragement and participation inspired me to keep going forward, and to dare think bigger and aim higher. I am deeply grateful for believing in this work and investing in EASTER Action!

Biodiversity, Leopard's Echo

Insects: the silent extinction

The focus of this edition of Leopard’s Echo is ‘endangered species’. This is a good opportunity to share the third instalment on the temporary insect exhibition, which went up at the Durban Natural Science Museum back during the COVID pandemic. It was entitled, “Insects: the silent extinction”.

The first two articles covered some important roles that insects play in nature: pollination, seed dispersal, recycling and improving soil quality, pest control, weed control, and population control. This article presents the contents of the third display case at the museum, which focussed on the ‘extinction’ aspect.

But first, I would like to introduce a group of insects that are particularly endangered in this modern world of industrial scale agriculture, pollution, environmental degradation and climate change: mayflies.

Mayflies

Order Ephemeroptera is an ancient group, the most primitive of flying insects, and one of three primitive orders of insects with aquatic nymphs – the other two being Odonata (dragonflies and damselflies), and Plecoptera (stoneflies).

Read the whole article in Leopard’s Echo, a bi-annual online magazine of Kloof Conservancy.

Climate change, Events

WICD – climate change chronicles (Part 1)

With this blog I’m happy to share the experience from the first three sessions in a series of climate change workshops with Grade 10 learners, in partnership with Umkhumbane Schools Project in Cato Manor, Durban.

The plan is to work all the way through the What I Can Do About Climate Change edu-action programme, with the same group of learners, firming up the contents, seeing how it is received, and refining the program so it can be implemented by other facilitators in the future, making it more accessible and impactful.

Over three days in March 2025, we completed six units with the same group of students, allowing us to gauge their feedback and see how the material was received. We ran three 2-3 hour sessions over consecutive days, with a mix of short video presentations and interactive, hands-on activities. We covered 6 units, and plan to carry on later in the year.

Based on the heart-warming and enthusiastic feedback from the learners, it is clear they found the sessions enjoyable and valuable. As the facilitator, I also had much fun, and learned things that will help me update the activities, and add some more teaching material.

Here are a few samples from learner feedback. My favourite: “It was a funny, enjoyable workshop where I gained a lot of knowledge, information and really liked it.” – If even one learner felt like that then mission accomplished!

Keep on reading for a more detailed account.

Unit 1 “What on earth is going on?” – about youth activism

The programme kicks off by empowering learners, showing them that before we are individuals, we are citizens of the world. Before even mentioning climate change, this introductory session places the youth at the forefront and shows the role they play in world affairs. It encourages young people to think at the global scale, rather than taking the small-scale view of ‘me, here, now’. Hopefully this arouses an inner sense of importance, relevance, empowerment and capacity.

The interactive video followed by two activities always work well. I have done this many times so there were no surprises. The fun quiz, using Plickers, is always a favourite.

Unit 2 “What is climate change?” – a brief overview

The video gives a very brief overview of climate change. It explains how the world is getting warmer, how this is causing record-breaking global warming and devastating world-wide impacts. Climate change is caused by a sudden recent rise in greenhouse gases to levels which humanity has not seen before. It is a human-made crisis, and it will get a lot worse unless we urgently do something about it.

The activity involves a community survey. The survey is not about gathering information or finding out what people know, its purpose is to give learners a way to ‘interview’ friends or family and so introduce the topic of climate change respectfully and in a neutral and engaging way. At the workshop, learners filled in the survey themselves. They said it was ‘easy’ and were confident and keen to take a second form home.

Two days later, their feedback was very positive. They enjoyed doing it. Some learners had interviewed school mates, or the whole family, or a brother. One learner who had interviewed a cousin at university, felt pleased that she knew more about the subject than the university student.

The feedback they got in turn, was also encouraging: they encountered positive interest rather than any negative responses, and it helped them to talk about the information that they had learned in the workshop.

Unit 3 “Weather or climate?” – the water cycle

The video explains the difference between weather, climate and paleoclimate, and the science of the water cycle. While we couldn’t get the students’ tablets online, we managed to do a live demonstration using Windy.com to show real-time global weather patterns. The learners were fascinated, especially when we located a cyclone over the Indian Ocean.

Unit 4 “Why is the world getting warmer?” – the greenhouse effect

The video starts relatively simple, but then gets increasingly technical. The learners were surprisingly interested in the science. I had planning to stop the video before it got to some really advanced topics (such as the radiation absorption patterns of different atmospheric gases), but they were all keen to carry on.

The learners all take science as a subject, so they had a reference point, and this lesson must have connected with things they already knew, they were just hungry for more! It was delightful seeing in them this appetite for scientific knowledge that also drives me to dig deeper into a topic until I am satisfied and my questions have been answered.

One activity explains global warming in terms of body temperature, to illustrate the importance of one degree of warming. Except for two willing volunteers, most felt too old for the ‘running around’ part, but they were deeply interested in all the information about ambient and body temperature.

It was really sweet: when I gave some learners a lift back to their school at the end of the workshop, they started rehearsing in the car the different temperatures: healthy body temperature, what is a fever, when you should go to hospital, what temperature is deadly. They found it fascinating that feeling hot is not the same as being sick. Well, it IS fascinating, isn’t it?

I had also pointed out how important this knowledge is for when they are adults and have their own children. It had little to do with climate change, but I love bringing real-life knowledge into these lessons, to show how science is not just something you learn at school, but something that is important in life – quite literally!

In another activity, learners created molecular models of atmospheric gases with playdough and match sticks, and we discussed which are greenhouse gases – or not, and why.

Unit 5 “Where do greenhouse gases come from?” – the carbon cycle

The next video shows how the main three greenhouse gases are deeply connected with life and living things. It turned into an impromptu science lesson, as I realized that some of the information in the video assumed prior knowledge they did not have.

We burned biomass (a dry twig) and watched the wood turn to black coal, we demonstrated how white wax and clear paraffin are indeed carbon-based fuels (by catching soot from the flame on a white saucer), and how burning a candle under a jar does indeed use up the oxygen in the air (the flame dies), producing energy (the flame) and water (steamed-up jar) – we could have tested for CO₂.

The biggest thrill was a methane experiment. I had brought a bottle of gas, and showed them pictures of how I had produced this from kitchen waste and pond water. (Ideally they should do the experiment themselves.) We bubbled the gas through soapy water and ignited the foam, creating a little fireball. We all got terribly excited! What a memorable moment!

Unit 6 “Why are greenhouse gases increasing?” – the root causes of climate change

This unit explored the root causes of climate change, specifically fossil fuels. This led to an important side lesson, and I realized we need another video on what fossil fuels are and how they are formed.

The session wrapped up with a highly interactive game, ‘Fossil Fuel Bingo,’ about which everyday fuels are fossil fuels and which are biomass fuels. It was so much fun they asked to play it a second time.

This workshop was a powerful reminder of how eager young people are to learn and get involved. We’re looking forward to continuing our journey with them later this year. Stay tuned for our next workshop as we continue to build a generation of climate-doers.

On the best-attended day we had 35 learners, the very limit of how many one facilitator can interact with effectively.

With fewer learners one can sit in a circle which is more intimate and feels less like school.

Uncategorized

2020 Vision

Globally, biodiversity teeters on the brink of the next great extinction since the demise of the dinosaurs, only this time human activity, not meteorites, are the cause.

What is less widely understood is that plant biodiversity is intricately linked to the survival of insects, and v.v. and together they support life on land.

As the world strives for sustainable development and tackles critical environmental challenges, a deeper understanding and love of nature is essential. Educating children for the present and the immediate future is key to achieving global sustainability.

2020Vision is an education initiative that wants to give young people ‘glasses’ of passion and knowledge. Humanity must learn to coexist in harmony with nature. The world needs passionate young people who can see clearly, who understand the workings of nature and global environmental challenges, who know what can and must be done about it and who are motivated to act for the environment, both now and in their future careers.

This innovative school curriculum enrichment programme supports biology, life sciences and environmental education. The programme will include:

Teaching resource kit, containing per school:
- 20 copies of What Insect are You?
- A teachers’ guide with
  - 10 stand-alone topical lessons, designed to supplement the South African life sciences curriculum (grades 4 to 12) but suitable for extra-curricular enrichment even for non-science learners of any age;
  - Instructions for simple, fun practicals involving live insects;
  - Classroom activities to stimulate discussion;
- 10 audio-visual episodes;
- Additional relevant articles, audio-visuals and Internet links;
Teacher training workshops targeting 20 schools at a time;
Outdoor educational event for 4 children and 1 teacher per school.

2020Vision is unique in its focus on insects. Insects are the dominant life form on earth (at current reckoning), are indispensable in nature, live everywhere, are small enough to handle yet large enough to observe, and are popular with children. Insects are perfect for learning about nature and the environment.

The resource materials, particularly the book and videos, are designed to arouse heart-felt interest, ignite passion and promote a joy in learning, playfully but convincingly covering important biological, ecological and environmental topics. The insect-centered topics surprise and delight children as young as 6, university students, adults and pensioners.