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Great Plains Foundation

Educating is a Privilege, not a Duty

By 22 January 2025January 28th, 2025No Comments

I am writing this dispatch from Botswana just days after sitting in a small Kgotla with the chiefs (Dikgosi) in what may be the most remote part of the country.

This is a place where, when I asked about the distinction between poor and destitute, it was a head-scratching debate. “No.” was the reply. “They are just poor, not destitute. We will show you someone worse off here.”

And if the tears of these last few weeks were not enough for us, the sadness of this downward spiral to the bottom tears at our hearts.

“And what do they need most?” I asked. Obviously, it is housing, jobs, and money, but it is ‘education’ for their children each time.

Here, it is always going to be education about how to survive the changes that saw Botswana temperatures reach nearly 120 degrees F (over 48 C), changes that are real and devastating.

Today, we want to honour Environmental Education Day, and the escape from today’s furnace is in the hands of the children we educate. We must educate not just for mathematics, languages, and science but also about the environment.

At this meeting, we discussed our final plans for something big for this community: the Great Plains Earth Academy, which will teach about the environment, conservation and tourism, but also business, and how to get on in the world beyond these villages.

Already, our guides and other staff across the company, in Kenya, Zimbabwe and Botswana, volunteer for education in the Great Plains Foundation to teach and to lead by example, speak about jobs in the conservation sector and to give hope.

With the formalisation of the Academy and its building, we strive to focus on that teaching and become a centre for hope, an escape from the dust, heat, and endless dry seasons for children to carry home as a flame of hope for their families.

It is our privilege, not only our duty.