Education of River Ecosystem for Elementary School Children

Dozens of elementary school children played cheerfully in a river by the by the pine forest in the foothills of Kawi Mountain, East Java on 29 September 2011. The group were students of Petungsewu Elementary School (locally known as SD Petungsewu) located on Dau District, Malang Regency, East Java. They came together with educators of Petungsewu Wildlife Education Center (P-WEC) to learn about river ecosystem through fun and adventurous games.

Education of river ecosystem is one of P-WEC's educational programmes for school children to learn about biodiversity in rivers, river pollution, and the relationship between river and human life. Similar to most of P-WEC educational programmes, the programme will take students to go directly in the natural places like the rivers. Adopting experiential learning methods, different from indoor or class-room learning ones, P-WEC believes that students will learn more about nature conservation and hopefully to care for nature in the future.

Students of Petungsewu are village or rural children who come from low economy level. However, they enjoyed P-WEC's educational activities in the river as much as other students from the city. P-WEC thinks that it is important to educate any child about nature conservation, especially those who live by the forests, and holds the programmes for free. As a non-for profit organisation, P-WEC believes that the children as the future generation will take care of the nature.