Improving Classroom Safety and Hygiene by Rehoming Wildlife..

 This week’s email comes from Emmanuel Lungu, our Operations Officer, and Steven Chirwa, our Head of Operations. It provides a truly unique look into some of the wide-range of work our Operations Team does!

One of the key responsibilities of the operations team is to provide technical support to the program, such as safety and hygiene practices across Impact Network schools. We consider this to be a prerequisite towards achieving quality education because the lack of safe learning spaces and adequate hygiene facilities can translate to lower attendance and decreased educational achievement. That is why the operation team takes pride in ensuring safe learning spaces for our students to learn in.

Sometimes that work to create a safe and clean space for students means that we have to solve unusual problems!  For example, bats have been a problem in a few of our school buildings for some time now – Joel, Zatose, and Chingolo Community Schools all had bats in the classroom walls this year. The bats usually take up residence in the small spaces they find between the wall and the roof. They squeak during lessons and deposit their droppings in the classrooms.  In the past, we have closed up the spaces, but the bats eventually make their way back. Classrooms with bat inhabitants have bats droppings and urine that produce an unpleasant smell.  We know that bats are associated with diseases that can be transmitted to humans through the droppings, such as rabies and histoplasmosis fungus, which causes a respiratory disease.  This is the reason is why having bats in classrooms is a major concern to the operations team.

Apart from the negative effects that the bats have on the students and teachers, we know from our research that bats play an essential role in pest control, pollinating plants, and dispersing seeds in the greater environment. Many bats eat insects, while others feed on nectar and provide critical pollination for a variety of plants, and fruit eating bats also play a critical role of seed dispersal. Unfortunately, regardless of all the benefits, bats are too often needlessly killed because people do not understand the important role bats play in maintaining a healthy ecosystem.

In trying to strike a balance between the effects of bats on the learning environment and their importance to the ecosystem, the operations team wanted to avoid poisoning the bats. After finding several other methods for eliminating bats from undesirable spaces, the team settled on the rehoming option and quickly set out making bat boxes to provide alternative homes for them.  Bat houses are made of wood and wire mesh and can be hung on walls or trees in locations that receive 6-8 hours of sunlight each day.

   Installing the bat houses on a classroom block.

Four bat houses were hung at both Joel and Chingolo schools and the small spaces were closed up after they vacated the classrooms. Going forward, the operations team has decided to construct bat houses for any school that needs them from unrepairable classroom tables and benches as a way of promoting upcycling of these scrap materials. We hope that our students will learn from this and choose to find similar solutions for wildlife that encroach on their own living spaces!