Tusk’s PACE (Pan African Conservation Education) programme provides conservation education materials and training for schools, colleges and organisations across Africa, and introduces practical solutions to solve local environmental problems. Since 2004 it has reached more than 600,000 people across 34 countries, through the free distribution of 14,000 “PACE Packs”. The resources have been well-received and are widely and regularly used. However, it was important to confirm that the materials and the way they are used are making a difference to conservation and to people’s lives. Impact surveys of those working with PACE were therefore carried out to assess this, to know what impact the programme is having, to understand some of its strengths and weaknesses, and how it can be improved.
IMPACT OF PACE ACROSS AFRICA:
Through the PACE programme, in the past two years alone more than 6,000 people started applying PACE solutions to their local environmental problems:
- 58% of partners who use the wildlife sections report that they or their communities are using solutions they learned about in PACE to help solve their human-wildlife conflict problems
- More people are monitoring human wildlife conflict than did so before using PACE
- More people are actively protecting wildlife than before using PACE
- Particularly heartening is that we are even seeing more people finding ways to earn a living from leaving wildlife alive after learning from PACE
Pieter Bezuidenhout of Carbon Green Africa in Zimbabwe said: “Through the PACE resources, an alternative approach through education and ‘self-problem solving’ is offered which has not been a consideration in the past. PACE gives a fresh look at rural communities’ problems, they deal with these from a different perspective.”
