The legacy of First Concepts in Animal Welfare
World Animal Protection ran a dedicated education programme in various guises for 27 years. Starting out as the “Respect for all forms of life“ programme in Costa Rica in 1989, it expanded into more and more countries, transitioned into “International Animal Welfare Education” (In AWE), and finally blossomed into the First Concepts in Animal Welfare (FCAW) programme which was delivered in over 14 countries, across three continents up until 2016.
In that time, we worked tirelessly to lobby ministries of education to include animal welfare within their primary and secondary school curriculum frameworks; establish a sustainable mechanism for institutes of initial teacher training to incorporate skills and content related to animal welfare in their own trainee teacher curriculum; and deliver training to in-service teachers to ensure that humane education was taught to children already in the school system. In addition to this, we have produced resources that have been used across the globe to teach about issues ranging from the illegal wildlife trade to intensified farming practices.
The impact of our efforts - a look at the numbers
Over the last five years through our revised education programme (FCAW), almost 1500 hundred primary and secondary school teachers have graduated from our animal welfare education programme and over the course of the next five years, at least 30,000 trainee teachers will learn how to incorporate animal welfare in to their teaching practice.
The curriculum changes that we are responsible for bringing in to effect across Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda will ensure that an estimated 20 million children each year are taught about animal welfare.
To download the complete FCAW teacher pack please click here.
The power of youth – a bright new future
World Animal Protection believes in the power of young people to change the lives of animals across the world at a huge scale. We are very proud of our long history of inspiring young people and all those in education to become involved in animal welfare, but it is time for a new way of working.
World Animal Protection is now focusing on younger people in a new way, speaking directly to them, and asking for their involvement in our priority campaigns. We will continue to work directly with educational institutions and teachers when formal education is the best channel for reaching these important stakeholders, but we also want to harness the power, the enthusiasm and the drive of young people as agents of change.