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Students of Gayaza High School use ICT to document and conserve local medicinal plants
Related to country: Uganda

Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

Conservation of Local Medicinal Plant through Environment
Education and ICT

Objectives
•Identify and document medicinal plants at school and local communities based on their traditional knowledge.
•Build a medicinal plant data base as a teaching resource for environment education in schools and non formal community (herbalists, village biologists) using ICT.
•Create awareness of the need to conserve biodiversity of medicinal value and share this information with research and other academic institutions for purposes of collaboration to enrich the data base.
•Disseminate information and knowledge in order to promote environment education on the importance of medicinal plants and biodiversity.

Planning and origin of the project:
During one of our visits to the street children of Kampala in assessing their livelihoods, it was realized that one of the challenges of the street children was living in squalid conditions without proper medical care; it became apparent that they mostly relied on traditional herbs to treat their ailments.
Today due to rural urban migration there is an increase in the number of street children in our cities. This project was conceptualized to identify the different local medications the street children use and to document them.
Gayaza high school is rich with so many plant species, many of which are medicinal/herbal meaning their leaves, stems, bark, flowers, fruits, and seeds can be used prevent or cure disease. The school botanical garden alone has over 50 medicinal herbal plants; the trees and flower gardens in and around the school compound can be very useful in treatment of many diseases.
The rate of degradation of medicinal plants and herbs around the school community is so high that if not well conserved will face extinction. The knowledge of their existence is also lacking among the student and local population. Conservation of medicinal plants, especially endangered ones depend largely on the conservation of the ecosystem in which they occur and harnessing the knowledge of their existence and importance.
Popular but slow growing and or naturally rare plant species are often under pressure. Sustainable management of medicinal plant species is important, not only because of their value as a potential source of new drugs but due to reliance on medicinal plants for health care.
Growing these herbal plants in organized gardens may be one of the means of achieving medicinal plant conservation by reducing the exploitation pressure exerted on naturally occurring plant species. This protects plants that are being threatened in their natural habitats. Through organized gardens can promote easy propagation of the plants.
The success of this project was greatly achieved through ICT as the students had to take pictures in the school compound and around school communities; supportive information regarding classification and further medicinal importance of the plant was obtained from internet search. Students prepared PowerPoint presentation of the medicinal plants with the following contents, classification, structure of the plant, means of propagation, medicinal importance, medicinal parts, and how the parts are used to cure diseases.

July 23, 2009 | 12:30 AM Comments  0 comments

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