Part of our duties, in addition to getting the center up and running and preparing Vincent and Amnon to teach the program, is assisting with the Roots and Shoots program. Roots and Shoots is the international outreach program of JGI to impact positively the environment, the community and animals. It is based on the idea that knowledge leads to compassion which results in action. It is usually based in a school group but an R&S group may be any collection of individuals.
A couple of weeks ago, JGI held a workshop in Fort Portal to introduce R&S to teachers in selected schools, ten of which are in Masindi district. Some will also be included in the Busingiro Environmental Education program but four are in or near Masindi town and along with Kara we visited them.
R&S is a self-directed program. All JGI does is empower the groups to action and provide guidelines. Jacqui is supposed to visit with the groups and offer assistance but she is quite pregnant, something neither JGI nor she, it seems, expected. If a group doesn’t follow through they are dropped from the program. If they get involved, they will receive additional resources from JGI.
Since the workshop was so recent and the school term just started we are trying to get in on the ground floor and help the groups get organized but we found out that some schools have already charged ahead with tree-planting and clean-up activities, while others don’t seem to have a good idea about how to begin and have teachers who are less than enthusiastic.
The plan for R&S in Uganda was to begin with younger kids, P2 and P3 so as not to compete with Uganda Wildlife Clubs which are older kids in P6 and P7, but most of the schools have lumped R&S in with Wildlife Clubs, duplicating our efforts and reducing the number of students who will be learning. I think we must encourage those schools to make one of their projects to have the older kids teach the younger ones and assist them in some simple projects like clean-up or recycling or at least, saying no to the ubiquitous plastic bags that are floating about on the breeze throughout Uganda and the world.
At one of the schools we visited, Karujuba, near the Masindi town line, the kids gave us quite a welcome but they had the least enthusiastic teacher we have met. That is until we asked about the music we heard. Talk about enthusiasm! She quickly organized an impromptu concert/dance complete with drums and xylophone and costumes for the dancers. We’re invited back for the official inter-school competition but I wonder why she was selected to head an environmental program like R&S.
