Last week, we told you about our the Two Oceans Aquarium Environmental Education Centre’s Young Biologist (YB) Course for Grade 11s. Edu-tainment for these budding marine biologists included snorkelling, hiking and volunteering. Today, we tell you about the 2011 YB graduation ceremony. This YB course was sponsored by De Beers Marine.
Each group that completes the Young Biologist (YB) Course has a graduation six months after completing the initial week-long programme. The YB group of 2011 had theirs on 14 April 2012. All the YBs have certificate categories to aim for, a diamond certificate denoting the highest honour.
In order to qualify for a diamond certificate, a YB needs to volunteer for at least 45 hours at the Aquarium, start or join an eco-club at his or her school, engage in a beach clean-up as well as receive an aggregate of more than 80% for all of the assessments of the week-long YB Course.
We were happy to see that six YBs received the silver certificate, eight a gold certificate and an amazing 32 a diamond! We are very proud of our YBs and thank them for their hard work.
A special mention should go to Thaakirah Samaai, who at the time of the graduation had volunteered 365 hours since October 2011, helping out at front-of-house, behind the scenes, and with our penguins and the various educational programmes we run at the Environmental Education Centre.
Another special mention should go to Brandon van Niekerk, who received the Director’s Award from Two Oceans Aquarium Managing Director Dr Patrick Garratt. Congratulations Brandon!
We would like to thank De Beers Marine for sponsoring our Grade 10 Young Biologist Course for the past eight years. This sponsorship is invaluable and we are very grateful for the contribution.
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