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Learning to make the world a better place!

USAID Bursaries 2012 USAID, as part of the 'Stepping up to Sustainability' programme with WESSA, is funding 15 people to attend the full EETDP qualification in 2012 and 150 people to attend the Environmental Educators short course. Click on the course you're interested in below to find out more and apply.

WESSA SustainEd offers a range of occupationally-directed (which is just a fancy word for workplace-based) accredited courses in the environmental field. We believe that good education and training in a supportive work environment can contribute a lot to solving some of the world's problems. We are accredited under the ETDP SETA and also have extended our scope to include courses acccredited under the LGSETA (Environmental Practices courses for municipalities and industry), CATHSSETA (a nature site guiding skills programme) and AgriSETA (a short course on organic farming). You can access SDL (Skills Development Levy) funding to pay for our courses - contact us to find out more if you're not sure how to do this. 

Do you want to develop new skills and knowledge to help make this world a better place? Are you outraged at the way humanity is treating the Earth? Do you care about things like social justice and economic fairness as much as you care about our beautiful planet? 

Perhaps you are already working towards changing our world or maybe you've just left school and want to get into an environmental career. Possibly you work for a company or organisation that wants to find better ways to do things. Maybe your'e self-employed and working in your community to make things better. 

What do we mean by better? We mean more intelligent, we mean exploring ways to run a business, organisation or community initiative in ways that make the Earth a better place, not just for your share-holders or constituents but for all people and living beings. We mean keeping up with where society is going - towards a free, open Earth-society where we are all able to express ourselves and live our lives with creativity and innovation and connectedness to the people and world around us. Where we put aside our differences in race, culture and religious beliefs and embrace our humanity. A society that no longer tolerates the huge inequalities between rich and poor, whether at the level of individuals or nations. 

So, you are probably already doing a whole lot towards achieving this vision of a better world. You already have a whole bunch of amazing insights into what needs to be done to get there. And you're doing what you can in your own life, your extended community and perhaps in your organisation or company to move in this direction. 

So then, what does WESSA SustainEd offer you? 

We have courses that can, perhaps, help deepen and strengthen your thinking and actions in working towards this better world. If you are involved in work that is 'educational' in essence - in other words you are working with and supporting others (communities, individuals, children, adults, employees in a company, municipality or government department, civil society organisation or whatever context you find yourself in...) towards better ways of doing things - then we have a course that we think might be of interest to you. It has a rather mouthful of a name - it is called the EETDP (Environmental Education, Training and Development Practices). 

Then, we also have a whole lot of courses that are aimed more at specific practices in various settings. These range from courses on organic farming and permaculture to courses for workers and managers in municipalities and industry on things like finding better ways to deal with waste, to manage waste water treatment works and the natural areas in and around our towns and cities. We have courses aimed at specific industries such as our environmental module for forestry supervisors course. 

Click on the 'Our Courses' tab on the main menu to find out more. (Note: this site is still under development and so much of the information is not yet up, our site will be fully operational by the end of February 2012. In the mean time, please contact us if you have any enquiries about our courses)

WESSA prides itself in being a leader in the field of occupationally-directed  education and training. In other words – our courses are tailored to meet the context and operating environment of the workplace. Our accredited courses are only developed after a rigorous research and needs analysis where we go into the work environment and interview future learners and their managers to gain an insight into how the training can lead to meaningful change and environmental improvements.

WESSA draws on a rich history of engagement in the field of environmental education and is a recognised international leader in this field. Although most of our courses are based in South Africa, we do run a range of international training programmes in the field of education for sustainable development (ESD) in association with partners (including a number of universities) in South Africa, Sweden, India, China and throughout the SADC Region.

Do register on this website if you'd like to recieve notifications of new courses that we develop, opportunities such as bursaries or if you envision developing some form of collaboration or relationship with WESSA SustainEd.