A four-year-old in Zimbabwe watches a VHS tape of David Attenborough narrating a wildlife documentary shot in Kenya. She watches it again. She starts rescuing millipedes off the ant trail in her yard. Years later, she's running an organization trying to give that same jolt of recognition to kids growing up minutes from elephants they've never seen.
Vimbainashe “Nicky” Chitauro is the Founder & Executive Director of WildEd Zim, a conservation education organization in Zimbabwe working with children, teens, and young adults to close what she calls the “urban wild gap” — the disconnect between kids who live alongside biodiversity and kids in cities who only encounter it on a screen.
For years her programs followed a familiar pattern: build a curriculum, hand it to a teacher, run it for a funding cycle, move on. It worked in the sense that clubs got started. It didn't hold. So she rebuilt the model as a system — one that reaches district officials, school administrators, teachers, students, and whole communities before a single club session runs.
In this episode:
• Why proximity to nature isn't the same as connection to it
• How one VHS tape shaped a career in conservation
• What it takes to build trust as a first-time founder
• The district-to-community system behind every WildEd Zim eco-club
• What kids actually say when asked how to fix pollution — and why it matters
• An international video exchange connecting students in Zimbabwe and Florida
• Why WildEd Zim hands ownership of its clubs back to the schools
• Her pitch to corporate funders who treat conservation as an afterthought
ABOUT VIMBAI CHITAURO
Founder & Executive Director, WildEd Zim.
🌍 https://www.linkedin.com/company/wilded-zim/posts/?feedView=all
ABOUT YOUR HOST
Scott Shepherd is the founder of Wildward Institute, based in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California. 🌿 wildwardinstitute.net
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