Saving The Black Rhino Project

Hi All,

Tremendous job, effort and results from Friday's "Ice-Breaker" Videoconference Session. Congratulations to the great teachers and students, technologists, film and other support staff behind the scenes!!   What a successful and promising beginning!!

However...

As many of you know the Bungoma site was shut off from most of the “Ice-Breaker” session due to technical limitations of network and related in that West Kenya area.   Not to say they were totally disconnected as you will soon realize once you read the great note just below from the Bungoma students and their superlative teacher, Mr. Bonaventure Masika.

And that is also the wonder of the Internet where we have many new and powerful ways to communicate, "live" or otherwise.

There are some wonderful ideas in here, suggestions, and great questions from the students of Bungoma, and for the students at our other remote sites.  Some questions for our USA NYC students, others general.  

These are some difficult questions that will take some time to address, but should be as part of the students’ research on this topic of endangered wildlife worldwide, and for our longer range project goals.

Such as - What wildlife laws are in place in the Western Countries (USA)?  How can we stop poachers who are using super state-of-the-art technologies and weaponry equal or sometimes surpassing the wildlife protection authorities to spot and kill rhinos (even from the air), while evading detection?

What a lethal cat-and-mouse game we have here!

But within this piece below we have the seeds for kids combating the bad guys and gals.  See their project goals, personal goals of the Bungoma kids!!

They also set down their specific research agenda for the Save the Rhino Position Paper  - To Research where those black rhino parts are sold.

And lastly but not leastly, there is also a great suggestion in the following document from Bungoma that the students create a “hymn” or song to the Black Rhino and to the world.  Marvelous idea.  Let’s have the students write some lyrics and put a tune to it!!

And what a spirit from the undaunted Bungoma team!!.....See Summary Conclusions section below

As always - don’t hesitate to comment on this and related.

Thank you all.

George


OBSERVATIONS - OBJECTIVES AND ICE-BREAKER FROM ABSENT BUNGOMA FOR THE REST OF OUR SITES - NAIROBI, NYC, SCITUATE, AND THE WORLD!!!

Hi all,

We missed a great session of the “Ice-breaker” due to the location, and the lower bandwidth facilities dedicated to our more rural and lower traffic area. Remember, Bungoma borders Uganda and we also had roaming Network problems, as Safaricom (our Internet provider) was alternating with MTN Uganda. At the beginning it was very clear and my students were very excited seeing George on our machine screen. “Wonderful!” they said. Afterwards we started experiencing the above mentioned challenges which let us to fail “Ice-breaker’’- meet and greet session.  Bad-luck. At the end we heard Mr. Ronelus’s (Johnny’s) message and we comply with it.

Though my students missed the “Ice-breaker” session they wrote this to you and wished it to be shared with all sites:

Student ‘I’

Hi all

My name is Vivian

A class 8 student Butonge Primary school

I come from Bungoma County, Kenya.

-My geographic region is Western Kenya.

-We are situated on the downs copes of Mt.Elgon.

-I am 13 years old.

-I love my county Kenya because it has several game reserves where my great interest is to care and protect our wildlife.

-Project goal that I expect is to make sure that the young generation advocates for Black Rhino life and all other wildlife species, though writen, demo, pictures and machu pichu one planet game.

-My goal is to see that all countries on the planet to set up rules that will govern wildlife management all over and banning of Black Rhino born markets.

-My group name is Jungle Protectors

-Our research is to see where those Black Rhino parts are sold.

         

Question I

Which laws do Western countries implement to reserve wildlife compared to third world countries that have Black Rhino slaughter cases as researched by the open Rhino project?

Thank you, bye-bye all.

Student “II”

Hi all,

My name is Jesse

A class 7 student Butonge Primary School

From Bungoma County- Kenya

My group name is Great Ideas.

Western lake basin as a geographical region. We receive both relief and convectional rains from Mt.Elgon and Lake Victoria. I love my country Kenya, the only country with a capital city having a game park, and my interest is to see Black Rhino is protected as a black African child. Since they have a right to live as the jungle law says and rule of law I believe if not it should be emendate and enforced. My expectation to the project goal is make sure that, hymn of save the Black Rhino should be sung all over and be understood by every child of the world and be enhanced by their serious

My goal/ interests are to see that one planet education reaches every child so that we can get proper suggestions that may determine the saving of the Black Rhino.

Question II 

Therefore, my question is, what measures are you going to take to those poachers who are now advanced in trafficking Black Rhino by use of helicopter, drones and even using firearms like silencers?

Thank you

Bye-bye all

Summary Conclusions by Bungoma – Students and Teacher/Mentor

Though our kids missed questions of the young generation of USA, NAIROBI and SCITUATE they request answers for their questions. They referred yesterday’s failure of connection with our culture saying which states that, “the breakage of a cooking stick doesn’t mean that is the end of cooking”. They are still determined for the project to move on. OK. A bad beginning makes good endings-

Bungoma Student Observations/Outcomes & Objectives

1. The kids observed that the project has helped them too much more creative where by most of them have known how to draw and paint using XO laptops.

 2. They have improved in chatting with others since the project has introduced Skype for learners to communicate with others from different countries and places in Kenya. 

3. Learners observed that through this project they have improve in English speaking since they will not talk any other language to other countries.

4. From this project learners are aiming to be intelligent and courageous to perform their work without any shyness, so as to make their country famous to other countries.

--