This project is initiated and planned for three years in order to obtain long-term impact of the TSNM conservation in Khau Ca protected area. By educating local children, PanNature expects to equip the future adults with sufficient environmental competences to make sustainable development of the region and TSNM conservation possible.

Starting in the school year 2008-2009 PanNature will take over the EE programme while maintaining strong links to the TSNM Conservation Project of FFI. Conforming to the vision of PanNature on EE, the project will be developed in a participatory way with a focus on project sustainability. After three years of project implementation, the teachers will be able to continue the EE with minimal input and support from PanNature or other external organizations, except that they will have close links with the management board of the protected area. This project will concentrate on capacity building for local teachers. They will be trained to develop EE lessons and then to integrate local ecological knowledge and pro-environmental behaviour training in their lessons. PanNature will use pre- and post-test evaluation of children`s environmental competence as research data to evaluate the impact of the programme.

In the first year project in 2009-2010, regarding as the subject of this grant, the EE coordination team and the teacher learning network will be established. These institutes will have meetings with representatives from all the stakeholders and manage the EE programme. The exchange of experience will also add value to these meetings. In the mid of 2009, these institutes will work out a detailed project plan based on a baseline school assessment. Afterwards they will participate in the development, implementation and assessment of the activities. Several teacher training will be organised in 2009 for two different groups of teachers. At first a group of teachers will be trained to work with extracurricular activities. The second group will be taught to integrate local ecological knowledge in the official curriculum, as required by the official curriculum. In both these trainings educational material will be developed. In this project year educational material will still be provided for grade six students to ensure continuity with the previous phase of the EE programme.

Over the next two project years (2010-2011 and 2011-2012) the focus will be on the EE activities, the consolidation of teachers’ knowledge in the school as organization and the sustainability of the project. Further teacher training will be provided if needed.