For conservation organisations, education is often considered part of the outreach work that happens alongside the main job. At The Expedition Project, we have increasingly come to see it differently.

Education can itself be part of the conservation model.

The Expedition Project (TEP) began by travelling across South Africa, meeting community and conservation projects and learning first-hand about the challenges they faced. Education quickly emerged as one of the areas where we felt we could make a practical contribution.

Today, that exploration has developed into an online academy bringing together conservation organisations, professionals, researchers and educators to share knowledge with people around the world.

The platform now includes 28 online courses, two e-books and multiple subscription options, championing around 20 conservation and community causes. Its subjects range from wildlife and marine conservation to veterinary science, conservation genetics and resources for people running social causes.

But building an online course was never intended simply to create another educational product.

A different approach to online learning

As a social enterprise, TEP’s primary objective is not profit. Our course model is designed to create value on both sides of the learning relationship.

Learners gain access to knowledge and experiences that can otherwise be difficult to reach. Conservation organisations and specialists gain another way to share their expertise, raise awareness of their work and, where applicable, receive income through the courses they help create. Revenue retained by TEP is reinvested into developing further opportunities and educational resources.

This means a conservation organisation does not necessarily need to build its own learning platform, marketing system and complete course from scratch. Its expertise can instead become part of a wider collaborative educational resource.

That collaborative approach can be seen in TEP’s Wildlife Conservation in South Africa programme, which combines contributions and topics across wildlife conservation, veterinary medicine, ecology and research. Its marine conservation programme similarly brings organisations and expertise together across subjects including sharks, turtles, penguins, marine mammals, conservation research and practical case studies.

Turning expertise into long-term social value

There is a wider lesson here for social enterprises.

Small organisations often possess extraordinary knowledge but limited capacity to package and distribute it. Digital education can help turn that existing expertise into something with a much longer lifespan.

A field experience can become a case study. A specialist presentation can become a lesson. Research can become accessible learning material. Knowledge that might once have reached a handful of volunteers or visitors can potentially reach students and conservation supporters internationally.

Most importantly, the organisation does not have to stop doing its core work to make that happen.

TEP has also applied this thinking beyond conservation through its Social Cause Academy, developed with project partners as a resource for charities, community projects, conservation organisations, not-for-profits and social enterprises. Its 81 lessons focus on sharing knowledge that can help people working within the social-impact sector.

Exploration to education

For us, the shift from physical expeditions to online education has not meant leaving exploration behind.

It means taking what those expeditions uncovered and finding ways to share it more widely.

The internet cannot recreate standing beside a conservation professional in the field, and it should not try to. What it can do is help someone understand that work before they arrive, discover a cause they may never otherwise encounter, develop knowledge for a future career, or support an organisation from thousands of miles away.

For social enterprises looking at their own expertise, perhaps the useful question is not simply “What can we sell online?” It is: “What do we know that could create more value if more people had access to it?”

That question has helped take The Expedition Project from exploration to education, while keeping conservation and social impact at the heart of the journey.

Find our more: https://courses.theexpeditionproject.com/