
Children — our future. Ecological education
While planning and starting implementation of any field projects, the main attention of WWF is addressed not towards just today’s effect of using money. Neigther preparation of any instructions and plans is an end of itself for us -even if these plans can be very important and correct. They won’t be useful, if there is no clarity who will implement these plans — and where from the funding for that can arrive. The most important goal of our work — is to make common people understand, that taking care of their own nature — it’s their own concern. In fact we don’t pretend to come up with something new: unity with nature is one of the deepest national traditions of the people of Central Asia.
It’s a pity — but a lot of these traditions are partly forgotten — or not used in practice. But it happens not because something really better exists — but because some easier way exist, which were invented — and to which people got used within the previous half a century.
So, how to revive old national traditions, how to renew commonality of people, living on the land — and nature?
There different ways to achieve this goal — and we try to use all possibilities. It includes direct work with local people — personal discussions, training seminars — and efficiency of this work is proved by our leopard conservation project.
It includes lots of publications — in national newspapers, special leaflets and booklets, radio and TV broadcasts… All of them are aimed on arousing national pride of the beauty of Turkmen nature — and on feeling responsibility for it — not somebody’s, but personal responsibility of each person, living on this land.
We consider training of children to be one of the most efficient activities of this type of work. Our project participants, the staff of state zapovedniks, as well as teachers of schools conduct special lessons; carry out concourses of paintings, compositions and even poems, put on the stage performances, in which main heroes are animals, inhabiting surrounding landscapes. Children come for excursions — to the museums of the zapovedniks and to the wild nature, where experienced teachers explain them how lot of miracles exist around — in the habitual surrounding landscape. There lots of forms of such activities — and children’s summer camps (rallies) proved to be one of the most efficient. The first «ecological camp» was organized some years ago in Uzbekistan. Since then they became practically