Education Through Adventure®

Founded by John Lucas, explore4knowledge® has been promoting syllabus-based holistic learning through environmental education activation and expeditions across Southern Africa since 2011. These multi-award-winning programs, camps, and expeditions managed through the e4k® Curiosity Fundâ„¢ have not only reached individuals across various socio-economic boundaries but have become a benchmark in promoting the pursuit of curiosity in the fields of Geography, Biology, and Science. Through our reach has grown alongside our support from our various partners and sponsors, to enable us to build fit-for-purpose vehicles, launch various digital media campaigns, and an Overlanding Channel dedicated to producing content that lives up to our standards of promoting Education Through Adventure®.

Founding Thoughts

Originally e4k was designed to be a personal blog aimed to share with you the reader the stories of the areas worked in and the work being done by friends in conservation internationally. With a growing interest in the work done and by using scientific research projects, community-based educational workshops, expeditions of discovery, networks, and partnerships to engage with local communities e4k has grown in leaps and bounds, and is today it is much more than just a blog. We are proud to say that our team has grown from volunteers to permanent team members, from working with organizations on projects to inviting others to join us on our projects and that we have received various awards for promoting environmental awareness, conservation on a grassroots level, innovation in communications and supporting various organizations with resources where possible.

Aim

The aim of explore4knowledge® is to promote Education Through Adventure® across all socio-economic boundaries, inspiring, understanding and creating an appreciation for our environment amongst the youth of today and the leaders of tomorrow in order to ensure we protect our natural resources for future generations and promote the desire to understand the world through Natural Science (Biology) and Science, as well as promoting a need for Geographical exploration through using digital media platforms, citizen science tools, partnering with industry leaders, corporate sponsors and private donors to breach the gap between science, adventure and education.

Objective

To use our various platforms to promote the pursuit of Curiosity.
In using our existing network and the e4k® Curiosity Fundâ„¢ to address conservation, humanitarian, education, and social development needs.
Specifically relating to lack of accessibility to resources within the developing world. To focus on the use of an innovative approach to learning through the use of technologies in storytelling to share the plight of natural resources as well as the message of our conservation partners.
As well as using Overlanding as a vessel for Good, telling untold stories of remote locations, vanishing species and rewilding efforts globally. 

Citizen Science

It is said that “curiosity acted upon is exploration” and for this reason, our team is pleased to not only pursue our curiosity across the African Continent but also Globally.
We are proud that our citizen science-orientated Educational campaigns not only feed valuable data into existing databases but that our Expeditions and Awareness Campaigns exist to answer questions around critical thinking, collect data for research programs and promote problem-solving across various sectors. 

Humanitarian

It can be said that our humanitarian efforts go hand in hand with our educational programs managed and funded by donors and sponsors through the e4k® Curiosity Fundâ„¢.
We are proud of how this aspect of e4k® has developed over the years, from us buying resources to hand out at schools, to a multi-faceted series of projects with various partners and direct donors. 
These humanitarian programs focus specifically on the sustainable distribution of prescription reading glasses as well as addressing sanitary needs within some of the most rural communities.
As an organization we know that we are not able to be everywhere at once and this is the reason why we created the Fund, to be able to equip others to do good in our absence. 

Expeditions

Over the years we have managed various projects in partnership with some of the world’s largest environmental organizations and corporates, focusing on climate change awareness, behavior change, product development, and research. These expeditions have been able to change industry, ground truth scientific data and win various awards for innovation. 

Though most impressive of all for us is that these expeditions have captured your attention and imagination as individuals. As a answer to this we are proud to announce through our sister company Educational Expeditions, you are able to join us in the field on some of our Learning Vacations.

Overlanding

This is our passion. To date, we have traveled over 300 000 km telling the stories of various conservation organizations, collecting scientific data, changing behaviour around sustainability, and producing digital media assets for visual storytelling.
Working alongside our partners we will be launching a series using our unique skills in promoting Education Through Adventure® all the while focusing on telling human  stories and promoting the global need for rewilding. 
All we can say is welcome to our overlanding channel. 

Rewild Series 

Rewilding is best described as – “activities are conservation efforts aimed at restoring and protecting natural processes and wilderness areas. This may include providing connectivity between such areas, and protecting or reintroducing apex predators and keystone species.”

Though we are not currently comitted to working within any specific rewilding areas we will be using our Overlanding channel to highlight the plight of vanishing ecosystems, tell the stories of community involvement and human wildlife conflict management. We invite you to subscribe to our digital media channels to learn more about our rewilding story. 

Conservation

The Conservation Focus of e4k is undoubtedly its golden thread moving through all the organisations divisions and holding them together. With our programmes focusing on traditional conservation practices, environmental research or the preservation of cultural and environmental heritage, we are proud to say our passion does not only stop there. Alongside our programs we focus on community development through our various eco -tourism development models and programmes.
With the growth of e4k from a mobile based educational programme to managing field locations, we are pleased to not only involve various community leaders, champions and members in the work we do, but to also provide opportunity to conservation and environmental sciences students, interns and volunteers.