Active in environmental protection in Botswana

Wuppertal entrepreneur enables species conservation lessons for children

The decision was made only a few months ago and is already bearing fruit: Wuppertal-based management consultant Mathias Mundt, Managing Director of M4 Consulting GmbH, decided to support two children’s projects of the SAVE Wildlife Conservation Fund.

In this special combination of education and species conservation, children near the species-rich Okavango Delta are led into a better future with preschool and environmental education. In a playful way, they learn in the “Education for Conservation” program how valuable wildlife is as a natural resource for their country – knowledge that could one day also open up career opportunities for them in tourism. “Hardly anything can be more sustainable,” Mathias Mundt said at the time, explaining his decision to get involved in Botswana.

The management consultant now supports two environmental groups for preschool children: one in the village of Morutsha and a second in Shorobe.

With his financial support, it was possible to train two teachers who are already giving the first wildlife lessons to the preschool children. In their first lesson, the children learned everything about zebras, their living and eating habits, and at the end, each child painted his or her own zebra. Each week will be about a different animal, next it will be the turn of gemsbok and rhinoceros. This takes away the shyness of wild animals, which many locals still experience as threatening.

Thanks to the financial support of Mathias Mundt, another environmental group for children in the village of Shorobe can start. Here many hardworking hands are already preparing the classroom for the children. The interior of the classrooms is already painted, and soon there will be new windows and a toilet. At the same time, the application process for the new teachers to be hired is underway.

The environmental groups for preschool children in Morutsha and Shorobe are part of a large project of the SAVE Wildlife Conservation Fund. Under the umbrella of “Education for Conservation” (E4C), the Wülfrath-based foundation supports numerous projects around the Okavango Delta. Sustainable help for self-help is the basis of E4C, which combines development, education and species conservation work.

Villages were chosen as locations where there have been numerous human-wildlife conflicts in the past and the inhabitants hardly knew how to help themselves other than to kill the animals. “In the case of highly endangered species such as lions or wild dogs, this is a disaster,” SAVE founder Lars Gorschlüter knows. “Not only do we need to sensitize children at an early age and introduce them to wildlife through play, we also need to show them sustainable perspectives on how they can benefit from the ecological wealth of their country.”

Thanks to the commitment of Mathias Mundt, a long-term rethinking will now take place in two more villages.

About M4 Consulting

M4 Consulting offers its clients many years of experience in all aspects of financing franchises, developing concepts for company handovers, and financing start-ups and existing companies.