Getting your Career on track: Careers in Conservation and Related Fields
In 2025, The Rosemary Pencil Foundation partnered with the Wildlife and Environmental Conservation Society of Zambia to develop a career-focused curriculum for secondary school students. The program is currently being implemented in four schools in Livingstone, in Zambia’s Southern Province.
This weekly after-school initiative equips students with practical skills such as crafting strong CVs, writing compelling cover letters, and identifying internship and funding opportunities. It also broadens students’ perspectives on career pathways, demonstrating that conservation is not a narrow field but one that spans a wide range of professions—including marketing, science, law, communications, biology, veterinary work, hospitality, and beyond.
We plan to broaden the project to other schools in Zambia as well as other countries. It is a much-needed addition to the curriculum and often overlooked.
Design Squad Global – After-School Program
A few years ago The Rosemary Pencil Foundation partnered with US media company WGBH in Boston. Design Squad is an Emmy award winning television series on PBS with curriculum for classroom activities.The emphasis is on design and engineering with a focus on going green. With aid from CITW, local teachers in Malawi were trained on the curriculum. The fun-packed activities enforce critical thinking and problem solving as the kids invent and develop ideas and devices that help to improve their own lives.The older group of secondary school students was working on the Wind Power Challenge while a younger group of primary school students was tackling the Flight Test Challenge.
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Creative Writing Prize
We launched a Creative Writing Prize and received entries from students at five schools - boarding and day schools. The essay writing competition for secondary school students is to encourage greater fluency in reading and writing in English.
Children in the Wilderness was instrumental in organizing the running of the program. The first round of judging was supervised by Mr Chipuzga of Mzuzu University and a final round of judging took place with a team of jurors in the USA as well as three local judges in Malawi.
We will refine the rules and regulations slightly for the next competition and hope to attract even more essays.