Paul Butler, Rare’s Vice President of Global Programs, introduces us to Brooke Nevitt — an environmental education and outreach coordinator who led a Pride campaign in the Northern Mariana Islands. Read about how Brooke networked with teachers, government agencies, and nonprofits alike to get coral reef education into school curriculum, and into the minds of students.
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Brooke Nevitt brings hands on experience to corel reef education.
Brooke Nevitt from Saipan in the Pacific’s Northern Mariana Islands focused her presentation on the need for partnerships. Her campaign’s focus was on the island’s reef ecosystem and marine protected areas (MPAs). In her pre-project survey 50 percent of respondents did not know that Saipan had an MPA. This is pretty remarkable since this tiny island measures only seven miles by 14 miles actually has a total of three MPAs! She asked the question, “If people are unaware of something, how can they be expected to cherish and protect it?” Brooke needed to get the word out!
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Brooke’s ”symbol of Pride” Primo was embraced by children and adults all over the island.
Over the course of her two-year campaign, she reached out to several target audiences; but she focused her talk on her efforts to engage children, and through them, their parents. But even working with a “captive audience” of young students she faced barriers. How could coral reef education be incorporated into lesson plans when environmental education was not in the curriculum at all? How could she engage kids in conservation when teachers lacked the base knowledge to teach nature or about the marine ecosystem? How does one devise a classroom lesson about coral reefs when their true beauty can only be seen in the water?
Brooke’s answer was to foster partnerships and solicit the help of individuals and groups who could help her. The result was teachers training camps, where lesson plans about coral reef conservation were designed and eventually embedded into the national curriculum.
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Children from Brooke’s community with a poster from her conservation campaign.
Through her partners she was able reach out to the community further. The Island’s Department of Environmental Quality and Coastal Management developed materials on reefs and reef ecosystems; MANI, a local NGO, funded teachers camps and student field trips. Teachers now get credits for attending the teachers camps and these credits accrue toward their professional development.
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Beautiful CNMI. Due to Brooke’s campaign, students will learn about the island’s marine ecosystems and the Marine Protected Areas.
Ten schools and 400 children were involved this year in a coral reef education program and this program is scheduled to expand next year. Brooke concluded that with partnerships in place, and enthusiastic support from the schools and Education Department, the scene is set for expansion. She hopes to continue with the campaign and expand it to neighboring Island, Rota, which was a site of an earlier Pride campaign that focused on the importance of Rota’s terrestrial ecosystem.
The symbol of Brooke’s campaign was the endemic Yellow-Crowned Butterfly Fish nick-named Primo. Her mascot visited during the presentation, much to the delight of the university audience.
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