Educate

We are inspiring waste-plastic innovation and behavioural change through our heritage boatbuilding training centre courses, campaigns and partnerships around East Africa

 

How We Do This

heritage boatbuilding training centre & courses

In 2022, we opened up Flipflopi’s Heritage BoatBuilding Training Centre. The training centre was set up to teach practical circular economy skills whilst preserving the indigenous craftsmanship of furniture-making and boatbuilding.

A 12-week course was designed and piloted in 2022 and we have now had 3 intakes of graduates pass through the course. In 2023, the course was incorporated into Lamu’s Vocational Training Institute.

expeditions and school programmes

On expeditions, we love to have people on-board and make it a priority to engage school children and others about plastic waste and what can be done about it. We’ve run workshops and talks for thousands of children on our sailing expeditions, are always enjoy taking part in talks at Schools and Universities.

We developed educational materials and toolkits that help inspire people to start their own circular economy projects and businesses, as well as making our boatbuilding process open-source

Take advantage of our resources and teaching materials.

art and music collaborations

There is no better way to educate than to leverage local influencers and creative partnerships. We are proud of our East African ‘artivist’ friends and collaborations working with artists like Arinitwe Peter (Uganda) and musicians like Muthoni Drummer Queen, John Udulele, Sandra Suubi, Juliani, Navio and Loko band.

award-winning films and content

We have made several films over the years to raise awareness of plastic pollution and solutions around Africa. ‘Pieces of Us’ - released in 2021 was awarded 1st place in the My Hero International Film Festival 2022. Plastic: A Second Life made it to National Geographic’s Short Film Showcase in 2019.

We also published our first children’s book in 2023 thanks to children’s author Linda Ravin Lodding, our very own Dipesh Pabari, and the magic of illustrator Michael Machira Mwangi (Beaming Books, 2023).

Scientific Research

Contributing to scientific research has become an important part of Flipflopi‘s activities. On the Lake Victoria expedition 2021, our scientific partners conducted the first-ever surface-to-deep water study of microplastics in this undiscovered freshwater ecosystem. On our 3rd expedition in 2022, macrolitter and microplastic studies as well as a social survey to assess people’s Knowledge, Attitudes and Beliefs towards plastic waste were undertaken around the Lamu archipelago, home to almost 50% of Kenya's coastline.

community-partnerships around east africa

Flipflopi partners with like-minded community-based organisations around the East African Coast and Lake Victoria to support sustainable waste management & recycling centres that serve the community.

Learn about our partners in Mwanza, Tanzania (EMEDO) and Kampala, Uganda (Plastik Talks)

Public Speaking

We’ve been on the TEDx stage, given presentations at international Conferences (Royal Geographic Society/ Volvo Ocean Race), held talks with classes from the Kenyan coast to the lakeshore to Nairobi, and presented to hundreds of pupils at schools across the UK. If you’d like one of our team to talk at your school or university please get in touch.

Learn more about our public speaking activities.

Educate Highlights

  • Opened up our heritage boatbuilding training centre and have run 3 12-week courses since we opened in 2022.

  • Conducted scientific research around macro and microplastics including a baseline survey to inform the Lamu operations through a Science-at-sea expedition in 2022

  • First sailing expedition from Lamu to Zanzibar led to legislation change and a media campaign that led to 850m+ people seeing our message

  • Second expedition around Lake Victoria kicked off our regional East African campaign to ban single-use plastic, and thousands of community members engaged.

  • Established partnerships with grassroots organisations in East Africa including Plastik Talks (Kampala) who are using artivism to change behaviours, and EMEDO (Mwanza), who are running a household waste segregation scheme.

  • Run multiple positive media campaigns together with artists and international partners around awareness days and via the community