5. COMMUNITY CONSERVATION & ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION

5. Community conservation & Environmental education

Jan-19

Feb-19

Mar-19

Apr-19

May-19 □ Batoke Family Nature Club: Organised the 3rd session on the 26 January on Plastic pollution & recycling: 38 families, 61 participants (62% women, 24 children between 4 and 17 years old (39%), 70% of community members not involved in the Green Project) □ Batoke Family Nature Club: Organised a programme evaluation meeting at the Limbe Wildlife Centre between LWC management and community representatives to discuss and share ideas on how to make it more efficient and successful. □ Batoke Family Nature Club: Organised the 4th session on the 9 March on water pollution: 16 families, 80 participants (70% women, 18 children between 4 and 17 years old (23%), 68% of community members not involved in the Green Project) □ Batoke Family Nature Club: Organised the 5th session on the 9 April on the positive and negative impacts of human activity on ecosystem health, in partnership with Da Zimbistic Cultural Centre: 25 families, 93 participants (74% women, 23 children between 4 and 17 years old (25%), 67% of community members not involved in the Green Project) □ Behaviour Change: Launched the #Protect Wildlife Campaign in Limbe on Endangered species day, 17th of May

Jun-19

Jul-19

Sep-19 □ Batoke Family Nature Club: Organised the 6th session on the 8 June on the forest ecosystem: 40 families, 97 participants (46% women, 40 children between 4 and 17 years old (41%), 100% of adults are members of the Green Project The #ProtectWildlife Campaign Under the patronage of the Senior Divisional Officer for Fako, and in collaboration with the regional delegation □ Launched an exhibition on the critically endangered Preuss's Red Colobus in Nyango’s Exhibition Hall, in partnership with Partners for Red Colobus (including our partners from the Korup Rainforest Conservation Society (www.korup-conservation.org), the University for the Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife and several civil society organisations, we inaugurated the campaign by unveiling 10 large doubleof North Carolina Wilmington) and the sided billboards, to raise Programme for Sustainable Management of awareness, educate and Natural Resources, SWR engage the local community, □ Batoke Family Nature Club: Organised the 7th session on the 13 July 2019 on Ecosystem Education in Mount Cameroon National Park: and instil a sense of ownership around protecting wildlife. The theme “From the 38 families, 83 participants (31% women, 42 mountain to the Sea: Let’s children between 4 and 17 years old (51%), protect wildlife”, highlighted 52% of adults are members of the Green 8 emblematic terrestrial and Project marine species of the South□ Special event: Conducted an environmental education programme with 120 West region’s biodiversity. A few months after, we schoolchildren from the local community launched our T-shirts focusing on the Sustainable Management of campaign, which served to Natural Resources, in partnership with the reward every participant of UNESCO’s Central Africa World Heritage Forest the Batoke Family Nature Initiative (CAWHFI) Club and to raise fund to □ Batoke Family Nature Club: Organised the 8th and last session on 14th of September: sponsor our rescue and rehabilitation programme for feedbacks on the programme, certificate the African grey parrots. award ceremony and launching of our #ProtectWildlife T-shirt campaign: 40 families, 89 participants (67% women, 39 children between 4 and 17 years old (44%), 78% of community members not involved in the Green Project)

Oct-19

Year 2019 □ School outreach programme: Started the 2019-2020 programme: 10 schools, 24 classes and 1,488 school children will attend our 16 lessons curriculum □ Nature Club Summary: 759 children registered; 1,637 total attendance □ School outreach programme: 335.3 hours of teaching, covering 10 schools, 45 classes and 2,511 students

“Cheetahs, wild dogs and rhinos disappeared from Cameroon. Elephants are threatened for their tusks, pangolin for their scales, and chimpanzees and gorillas by habitat destruction and the bushmeat trade. Nature is our cultural inheritance: the killing of animals must stop and we must protect wildlife.”” Ngwese Nzimbi Koge President of Da Nzimbistic Cultural Centre #ProtectWildlife Campaign partner

Environmental education

In addition to our daily operations at Limbe Wildlife Centre, we devoted more time and resources to our educational programmes in 2019. Throughout the year, we ran three educational programmes to teach our community about the importance of preserving their wildlife heritage: Saturday Nature Club for Kids, Batoke Family Nature Club, and general school outreach., For the first time, 385 rural community members from 145 families learned about a range of conservation topics (including water pollution, plastic pollution, damage to the local ecosystem, etc.), and how these issues impact their daily lives, the land, freshwater and the marine ecosystems. The best participants of this intergenerational education programmewere rewarded with a certificate during our 25th-anniversary ceremony and received a T-shirt as part of our #ProtectWildlife Campaign. Five of them have been identified as potential conservation leaders for future educational initiatives. Finally, after months of interruption due to the civil conflict, school resumed and we began teaching children about nature again. With the help of our Education coordinator, we also made a number of updates to our Nature Club to make it more appealing and entertaining. We now use more media, address more topics, and conduct more diverse activities. In 2019 that doubled our attendance doubled and the number of children receiving our environmental lessons each week in school increased by 31% for a total of 24 primary and secondary school classes. Our total outreach for 2019 was 2,511 kids in school weekly and 1,637 kids in our Nature Club for the year. 38

Year 2019

□ Community-based Green Economy:

◌ 113 women members sold crop by-products, increased their land value, and contributed to reducing encroachment into the Mount

Cameroon National Park: 11,467 kg of cassava leaves, 39,602 kg of papaya leaves, 36,735 kg of potato leaves (∑= 87.8 t); ◌ 15 ex-hunter members sustainably harvested wild herbaceous plants: 9,640 kg of Aframomum stems and 7,788 kg of Costus stems (∑= 17.4 t); ◌ Combatted the spread of the invasive Trumpet wood in South-West

Region: 525 trees hand-cut representing 6,861 kg of shoots; ◌

Income generated: 11,533,515 FCFA (€17,608;

+10.2% YoY growth)

directly benefiting the local community association and helping

alleviate poverty in 201 9 For 15 years, we have sustained an environment-friendly economy and provided alternative livelihood to the hunting and wildlife trading community of Batoke. In the past 3 years alone, €46,100 contributed to alleviate poverty for more than 500 community members, of which a vast majority are women farmers. to

Our project has 3 components: 1/ Increasing land value by purchasing crop by-products to women farmers as a way to reduce encroachment into the Mount

Cameroon National Park; 2/ Sustainable harvesting of wild herbaceous forest products by ex-hunters; and 3/ Combatting the spread of the invasive

Trumpet wood in South-West Region.

Community livelihood projects

Last year, we purchased 17.4 tons of wild herbaceous plants, 87.8 tons of fresh crop byproduct leaves and 6.9 tons of invasive Trumpet wood shoots for a total of €17,610 (+10.2% YoY growth)directly paid to 128 Batoke community members. As the womenfarmer’s workload remains stable, the financial benefit of selling crop byproducts is high. Ultimately, these incomes encourage the community to reduce the pressure on the surrounding wildlife and allow them to enhance both education and health care to their children.