Update on Conservation Education Initiatives

It is high time I update you on all of our conservation education outreach activities in Fort Dauphin, Besakoa Ambany and Berenty Villages.

Fort Dauphin: The biggest news so far is that the conservation club has a new club house! This clubhouse costs less in rent than it did for two meetings a month at our old venue. It is in the same neighbourhood as the previous meetup location so all of the children should be able to walk here after school. One thing that is a plus about the new clubhouse is that one of our long-standing members of the club is currently homeless and the club house offers a safe place to stay. We are currently working on having club house rules made up and painted on a sign that can hang in the club house. In other relevant news I should be making an unexpected second trip to Madagascar in September and October this year! This means I can visit the club house for the first time and make sure everything is running smoothly there. Our budget right now is 90 CAD per month to run the meetings at the club house. This pays for monthly rent and snacks and drinks for the meetings. We currently only have one monthly donor (Lake Huron Life Insurance) so we still need to raise 75 dollars per month to cover the costs of the Fort Dauphin Conservation club.

children say “thank-you” for new club house

Besakoa Ambany: This year we took another trip to Besakoa Ambany to see how our lessons were received by the school children. Unfortunately the teacher was sick during our visit, so we were unable to interview him. The children of the village were very excited to receive their very own lemur activity and colouring books.

Berenty Village: Berenty village was where we conducted the bulk of our conservation education lessons. The students especially enjoyed the lesson “smell like a lemur” where students would learn to identify different smells just like a lemur can. Here is an image of Milliasse, the conservation education assistant, preparing the smell like a lemur lesson.

Right now I am working hard to prepare the final report for the International Conservation Fund of Canada, which funded these activities. I am also gearing up for my talk at the MacKay Centre for Seniors in Goderich on July 10th at lunch time. That’s all for now. Stay tuned for next time when I talk about what projects I am working on now.