The Two Oceans Aquarium Foundation Is Bringing the Sea to the Classroom

The Two Oceans Aquarium Foundation’s outreach programme is likely to reach 100,000 children this year.

• The Two Oceans Aquarium Foundation’s outreach programme is likely to reach 100,000 children this year.
• The Foundation, which has about 3,000 schools on its database, teaches children about the ocean and what they can do to preserve it.
• One of its goals is to reach schools inland, where children may never have seen the sea.

On weekday mornings, staff from the Two Oceans Aquarium Foundation often head to schools in Cape Town’s poorer areas to teach learners about the ocean and what they can do to preserve it.

In the financial year to February 2024, the education department of the Foundation, now named Ocean Campus, reached 70,000 children in the Western Cape. This financial year, the staff expect to reach 100,000 children, says Ocean Campus head Leigh Meinert.

From early childhood development puppet shows, online courses, and teaching in classrooms, the staff are pulling back the surface of the ocean and helping young people to understand a little about what lies beneath and why it’s important.

Some of the children they meet will find their passion and make protecting the sea their life, like Anzio Abels. Abels, who was a course participant at the aquarium when he was at school, has been a critical part of the outreach programme for a decade.

This year, he says, he’s covered about 12,000 kilometres and done around 85 school visits. His main message when he’s out in the field is about how people can “make sustainable choices in their everyday lives to protect the environment for our own future”.

Abels, who this year launched his own online course for the Ocean Campus, called Climate Action Now, says there are some common questions from learners across the board. When he’s teaching about the environment or biodiversity, the kids most often want to know if megalodons and mermaids exist.

The Two Oceans Aquarium Foundation, under which Ocean Campus falls, has about 3,000 schools on its database. One of its challenges is to reach people inland where children may never have seen the sea.

This is important because much of the damage to the ocean is done inland. From chemical leaching and discharge flowing into rivers to prolific amounts of single-use plastic and typically large carbon footprints, big cities far away from the ocean can have an outsized impact on the sea.

“To reach inland provinces, we have our online videos – it was one of the reasons to launch our Ocean Campus Studios and we now have our own YouTube channel,” Meinert says, referring to the Foundation’s audiovisual department. “More and more we’re filming our lessons and making them available freely on our YouTube channel. That’s one way to have an impact. Online courses are another.”

With adult education another area of expansion, the Foundation is also working on influencing parents so that they’re equipped to share that knowledge with their children.

“We’ve analysed what people know when they come in, and then we ask what do they know when they leave? Oh, they know more: great, we’ve done a good job.”

“But that doesn’t really speak to the impact,” Meinert says.

Often the results are anecdotal, she says, citing one example where one of the children in an outreach class in Lavender Hill years ago now has her doctorate in oceanography.

“And that’s just from one visit,” says Meinert. “What we’re really now focusing on is tracking our courses, letting school children know about marine sciences as a matric course, the new kind of subject choices they can make, and consolidating everyone who has come through our courses into an ocean champion community, helping them with what they want to do and supporting their activism.”

Meinert sees the Ocean Campus collaborating with all kinds of institutions from corporates to universities to activist groups. There are also plans to invite former students who have gone on to work in the marine field to give master classes. The future, she says, is going to be about upskilling, community events, and things like giving students who have completed courses aquarium membership.

Getting the Ocean Campus to where it is now and the number of children whose lives it can touch is a significant achievement, says Ann Lamont, executive chairperson of the Foundation. “But we can’t stop at just a lesson or a course. We’re moving toward sustaining relationships with people who’ve been through our programmes and supporting them and starting to tell their stories.”

As for funding, Meinert says it’s difficult.

“There are just so many worthy causes out there. Being a funder must be a nightmare because there are so many issues. We’ve done very well to build long-term relationships. But I’m also surprised by how little funding we sometimes receive, given how significant our reach is and how impactful our work is,” she says.

Nonetheless, with expansion underway, the Foundation has taken on a new stakeholder relationship manager and is ramping up its fundraising efforts.

According to a report released earlier this year, only about 1% of philanthropic giving worldwide goes to the marine conservation sector. Yet the ocean is vital for sustaining life on earth.

But that’s not to say there isn’t hope; Abels says he sees the impact the Foundation’s outreach visits have, especially in schools that are revisited regularly.

He says when young people understand how they can affect the environment in their everyday lives, they are willing to make decisions to preserve and protect it for the future.

“Young people are eager to learn about how the world works,” he says.

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