One of the most important components of our Ridgway's Hawk Conservation Project in Dominican Republic is our environmental education program. By working one on one with individual community members, giving presentations at local schools, participating in radio interviews and developing educational materials, we are reaching more and more people every year with our conservation message. This is important, especially considering that one of the greatest threats to the survival of the critically endangered Ridgway's Hawk is human persecution.
We are always trying to get more organizations and individuals involved in our education program, and who better to help spread the word than teachers working in our target communities? With that in mind, we hosted not only OUR first teacher training workshop in Dominican Republic, but one of the first and only ones for public school teachers related to conservation in the country!
The workshop lasted four days and ten teachers participated from 5 of our target communities around Punta Cana. We had really positive feedback from all the teachers and our pre and post evaluations showed a huge improvement in their knowledge of raptors, Ridgway's Hawks, and food chains, as well as a greater understanding of how they can adapt the activities they learned in the workshop and use them with their students.
Perhaps the best part of the workshop was paricipation from two of our partners: Puntacana Ecological Foundation and Propagas Foundation who will continue to host teacher training workshops in key areas around the country. Our next steps will be to work with the Ministry of Education to publish and distribute an education guide we wrote related to the workshop.
