Student Spotlight Saturdays! Robin Heathcote is a 2014 graduate from the University of Edinburgh from the Environmental Geoscience degree. He came away with us to conduct his final year dissertation out in our Akumal, Mexico site. The dissertation focused on poor coastal sewage disposal systems and the impacts on offshore coral reefs. My Opwall experience in Mexico definitely inspired me to pursue an unconventional career path which pushes my boundaries and seeks to improve the quality of life of communities in struggle and to restore an area of biological degradation. At Akumal, the different activities and monitoring on site, as well as being surrounded by similarly enthusiastic and very helpful specialists and students made for a fantastic learning environment which made my dissertation work a very memorable experience that I will never forget. Since coming away with us on an Opwall expedition, Robin has been inspired to begin his own career by aiming to improve the lives of communities out in Zimbabwe through a series of projects! Truly fantastic! During my final semester, I visited the project site in Zimbabwe, a rural area called Chimanimani to see who I would be working with and the landscape which I would be working in. During the visit a proposal was drawn up for the different projects we wanted to start; water and food security, education and sustainable livelihoods. I will be the co-ordinator of the water and food security and my girlfriend Sarah Lang (also a graduate from Edinburgh in Sustainable Development) shall run the Education project and we would both work on the Sustainable Livelihoods project. The director of all the projects will be Julious Piti, a Zimbabwean with great experience and success in bringing permaculture to the area and using it to regenerate the landscape and improving the communities quality of life. My project will be spreading and sharing our knowledge and local knowledge with communities in a drought stricken region of Chimanimani. Since university, we have been focused on setting up the projects, applying for funding and building the website. The link to Robins new project can be found here: poret-livelihoods Also check out the crowdfunding page to help out with his project: goto.gg/18902 We wish you the best of luck with your endeavours Robin! Keep us posted on how the project in Zimbabwe goes!
Posted on: Sat, 06 Dec 2014 13:00:00 +0000
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