One of WILD’s main priorities is capacity building – training people and giving them opportunities to work for a sustainable future. Over the past several years, WILD has collaborated with EARTH University in Costa Rica to provide promising students a meaningful educational experience and the skills needed to be the next generation of conservation leaders.
EARTH’s mission – “to prepare leaders with ethical values and contribute to the sustainable development of the humid tropics and to construct a prosperous and just society,” is fulfilled by their holistic approach to education. Students are immersed into experiential learning, entrepreneurial enterprise, critical thinking and problem solving and results based solutions.
The inaugural class of 60 young men and women from six Central American countries enrolled at EARTH in 1990. Since that time, over 1,368 graduates have completed the program.
This past December, Jorge Luis Olmedo, a WILD scholarship recipient, graduated from EARTH. His accomplishments at EARTH including supervisory roles during an entrepreneurial project and an internships at Greenland Technologica EM in Poland. Like most EARTH graduates, Jorge will likely return to his home country (Paraguay) to share his skills and knowledge. Read more about Jorge Olmedo’s time at EARTH >
WILD is also proud to provide scholarship, through the generosity of an angel donor, to a South African Student, Mr. Ephraim Bonginkosi Pad. He is studying Entrepreneurial Agriculture, and learning a great deal! He says that it was difficult to get used to all of the lectures in Spanish, but that studying at EARTH has opened many doors for him.
He says of this experiences, “We get more involved with the field work and its as if you have the degree in your hands. As the food crisis increases all of the continent of Africa, more students should be enrolled in agriculture studies to fight the problem. More agriculturists should be produced not only to work and produce crops, but to go out and pass on valuable information to people in the rural parts of South Africa.” Read more about Ephraim Pad and his experiences at EARTH >
We wish Mr. Ephraim Pad the best of luck in his continued studies and congratulation Jorge on his outstanding work during his time at EARTH!
In the present time when the people in their understanding of the conept of natural wilderness associate its ecological value with the economic benefits, it’s imperative to do the best we can to educate the communities to understand their responsibility to mantain sustainabilty of the local wilderland for the future generation.
From reading the above text above about The University of Earth I can really state that its a good university to pursue a career in agriculture at and on the bases of the remarks made on Ephraim Pad which was my classmate at the University of Kwa Zulu Natal, i could say that may he succeed with great excellence and that he found the right place to pursue his career at and that he must continue to seek all of his wishes in life.