Monitoring and Evaluation Strategies for Environmental Education Programs in Zambia

Abstract

African savanna elephants face multiple human-driven threats to survival. Environmental education (EE) programs can alleviate these threats by connecting communities with conservation efforts. Game Rangers International (GRI), an elephant rehabilitation organization in Zambia, engages communities through two EE centers: the Wildlife Discovery Center and the Basanga Youth Center. Measuring outcomes from these programs requires formal monitoring and evaluation (M&E) strategies. Collecting and analyzing primary qualitative data in NVivo 14, this project leverages in-depth interviews with GRI program coordinators to generate high-level logic models. The results illustrate that human development goals are interconnected with wildlife protection outcomes. This project includes valuable recommendations for GRI, such as tools to measure complex outcomes, to digitally collect data, and to build internal M&E capacity.