Overall the school BD pilot project can be considered a great success. The school project teams enjoyed their experiences in the School BD Programme, sighting that they felt they had grown positively in knowledge, spirit and organization over the 2-year period. The project team found both the garden and outreach programmes effective methods of educating their classmates on the importance of BD. The majority stated that they would be interested in continuing the project in future.. In the final period the school project teams concluded their outreach campaign, building awareness among the school communities on the school BD garden and it?s functions, their selected wildlife species and the overall importance of BD and how humans affect and are affected by this diversity.
The School Programme was broken into 2 categories ? The BD garden and outreach programme with prizes for primary and secondary schools. Activities from the entire project period were tallied to determine the winners. This included the garden and outreach proposals, mid year reports, research reports on wildlife, the presentations and the on the ground activities.
With the conclusion of the school Bd Programme, the project was able to focus better on the BD community center. Work during this period focused on improvements to the center, developing outreach and exhibition materials and creating the native garden.
Challenges to the BCC included improving the rainwater system. Given our tropical settings the project had to adjust the original rainwater harvesting system to accommodate for much greater rainfall and mosquito problems.
The tanks quickly fill up when there is heavy rain and there is sufficient water to irrigate the plants in the native garden. The composting system has produced its first harvest of rich black humus, which has been used to enrich the soil of the native garden.
The project has received a lot of feedback from the community through our outreach efforts. Many customers to the center have begun asking how they can get more involved in the activities. We are also receiving queries from the public on composting at home and how they can get more involved in conserving our BD. The educational and outreach material developed by the project has been very useful in providing more detailed answers to many of these queries. The center has received positive response from the public and we hope to make it a key resource center on the environment.