Participatory Community Education to Mitigate Human-Elephant Conflict in Botswana

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10

Foreign Countries; Community Education; Animals; Agricultural Occupations; Conflict; School Community Relationship; College Students; Universities; Student Experience; Student Attitudes; Learning; Expectation; Workshops; Experiential Learning; International Programs; Qualitative Research; Adult Education; Student Surveys; Semi Structured Interviews

Botswana; Massachusetts (Cambridge); Texas; South Africa

In northern Botswana, conflict between subsistence farmers and elephants can result in destroyed agricultural crops and death for both species. In June of 2016, students and faculty mentors from four universities traveled to the Okavango Delta region of Botswana to participate in a community education project designed to develop locally relevant solutions to mitigate human-elephant conflict. Local farmers and community members partnered with university students to design solutions and build prototypes of those solutions. In this paper, we present findings pertaining to the university students' experiences, perceptions, and learning during and as a result of the workshop, including ways in which expectations and the actual experience were aligned and the experience of partnering university students with members of the local community. Findings indicate that future, similar projects should work to ensure an appropriate balance of instruction attention between the local and student participants. Successes include open dialogue and collaboration among all workshop attendees, application of university coursework to address issues of problem solving, design, working with diverse groups, and co-creation of prototypes of simple machines, tools, and devices ready for use and testing by local farmers. [For the full proceedings, see ED581791.]

As Provided

10

2018

ED581861