The overall purpose of these Compassionate Biosynergy Conservation Camps (CBCC) is to achieve Biosynergy - the well being of humans and nature in our target areas. We will use a Person-Centred approach to enable the biosynergy of clusters of communities in four areas of Southern & Central Africa. They all have glorious landscapes, rich with wildlife, but with many people who are struggling, and nature that is under threat. Our goal is to work with young people, to help them connect with the natural world around them, and through that to better connect with themselves, their elders & communities, their common future and ultimately, to build biosynergy among all who live in their ecosystem.

The Camps. The Biosynergy Conservation Camps will take groups of young people into wilderness areas for 5-7 days. They will experience watching, hearing, and feeling the lush mysteries of nights and days in the bush, up close with nature. Facilitators will help them deepen, articulate and share their experiences of the birds, animals, & trees and appreciate the sounds, light and aromas of their natural world. We will help them explore how their ongoing communion within nature affects them, how it affects their feelings towards wildlife, towards each other, towards their futures, the future of their communities and ecosystems. Facilitators will help participants, and each other, find, elaborate, and execute their own compassionate person-centered projects, whether small, or large. At the end of each camp they will be encouraged to share what they've discovered and what they've accomplished, through drama, writing, artistry or any other format, medium and platform of choice.

Our team. The Biosynergy Team will work closely with local conservation education partners. We will co-design and co-facilitate the camps, together with local interns. We have sites in mind. ... ... . Our hosts will take the lead on local logistics, and will propose schedules that are practical locally. The young participants will come from local communities. Up to four CSP members will attend each camp; we hope they and others will join on-line planning sessions in which they, with Biosynergy experts, will build Compassionate Conservation frameworks, activities and methodologies. The final planning will take place in the field: local and international trainers, facilitators, educators and interns will spend four days prior to the youth camps creating the final, detailed plans and programming.

Camp Locations. We have been asked by local conservation and community education partners across southern and central Africa to help them develop and fund Camps to fit the needs and dreams of youth and their communities. The first program will be created in the far north of Kruger National Park in South Africa, likely followed by a multiple village project in southern Zimbabwe. Local friends and colleagues in Mozambique, Cameroon and Kenya are also talking about involvement. Exact sites will be selected as we progress, guided by local partners.

The Context. There are many communities in these areas, which are in or close to international wildlife conservation sites, where a majority of young people, for numerous reasons have limited knowledge of and connection with the ecosystems and biodiversity around them. In some cases this is due to their parents or grand-parents generations having been relocated out of wildlife conservation reserves into adjacent semi-urban areas. In other cases it is where land in remote ungazetted areas has been settled by people from distant urban townships. Our goal is to facilitate Biosynergy – to better involve and engage persons in these local communities, through their youth, with their mutual life-enhancing relationships with the natural world, and among themselves.

Compassionate person-centered results and outcomes. We will observe the capacity of children to live in synergy in a natural environment that is new to them. Follow-up, implemented by those based locally, will look at whether participants become more supportive of each other, of the elderly and others in their community, after the biosynergy camps. We will explore how compassionate connections with wildlife and wild lands enabled participants to become ‘useful interlopers’ in their efforts to return and give something back to nature. The Biosynergy Education & Training Programme, currently in Cameroon, will be opened to participants wanting to build on their Camp experiences: high school students and interns wanting to take their compassion for nature on to college, for example, or an educator or counsellor keen to develop their own person-centered practice. The Biosynergy Project is helping people commune in caring creative biosynergy with all life in the ecosystems & biomes where they live.

CSP facilitation. Please contact Anthony Rose alrose@biosynergy.org or Penny Fraser penny@pjfraser.uk for more information. Your input will be on a voluntary basis at the outset. We are fundraising to cover costs on the ground - travel, accommodations, material and logistics costs of the camps - with intention to pay at least the expenses of facilitators, trainers and other experts who help us successfully launch and run this initiative. Join us to collaborate in positive, compassionate, authentic synergy for the current and future well-becoming of all life throughout the sacred biosphere of earth.

Compassionate Biosynergy Conservation Camps

By Center for Studies of the Person

Compassionate Biosynergy Conservation Camps

Southern Africa, 2024.