Moyoni, one of the Solar Sisters, was delighted to receive her new equipment

Hi, this is Tuver,

As Henry explained last week, we’ve just taken delivery of the equipment our Solar Sisters need to bring power to their villages for the first time. As you can imagine, things are more than a little hectic here right now, but everybody is so excited, not least the ladies themselves who are itching to put the skills they learned over in India to good use.

As you can see from these latest pictures, news of our work is spreading across Africa. Over the past few days, I’ve spoken to the national and regional media about what this delivery will mean to some of the poorest villages in this part of Africa. As I explained to them, by having a reliable source of electricity, people will be able to work and study for longer, allowing them to earn more money that they can spend on food and education. It’s also very good news indeed for the gorillas living alongside these villages as they will be left in peace now that people will no longer have to enter the national park for food and fuel.

So, here are a few pictures from the past couple of days. Just look how excited the ladies are. As Henry said, we’ll do our best to keep you up to date with the project, and on behalf of us all and the ladies themselves, I’d like to thank you for your generous support, without which none of this would be possible…

Here's Moyoni again, checking out the equipment she will use to bring power to her home village

Here's Henry helping unload the solar power equipment from the lorry

News of the delivery travelled fast. Here I am talking to the reporters about the project!

Here I am welcoming the delivery of the equipment for our incredible Solar Sisters

Hi, this is Henry,

I am writing with some very happy news from here in Goma.

As you may recall, at the end of 2010, the Gorilla Organization sent five Congolese grandmothers over to the Barefoot College in India. Here, despite the fact that all but one of them is illiterate and none of them had ever set foot outside of their home villages before, they trained to become solar power engineers.

Well, now they are back home and about to get the equipment they need to bring electricity to their villages for the very first time! As you can see from the picture below, I personally went along to welcome the lorry carrying $100,000 worth of solar power technology to Goma.

Once it’s been released by customs, we’ll get to work distributing it to our ‘Solar Sisters’, and they will then get busy bringing renewable power to their home communities. By having a reliable source of electricity for the first time, people living in these tiny villages will be able to work and study for longer, easing the burden of poverty and meaning they will be steadily less reliant on the forests that they live alongside, thereby leaving giving the endangered gorillas here the space and peace they need to thrive. How’s that for a good start to 2012?

Of course, I’ll be sure to keep you updated as the Solar Sisters get to work, so watch this space!

The new equipment means the Solar Sisters will be able to put their skills to use

Members of the community at Nkwenda checking on this year's harvest

Hi, this is Tuver,

The indigenous Bambuti people of DR Congo are among the poorest communities living alongside the Virunga National Park, home to the critically endangered mountain gorilla. While in the past they lived as hunter-gatherers, relying on the gorilla habitat for food, fuel and shelter, the establishment of the national park left saw these communities evicted from the forests. They were left homeless, without land and lacking many of basic skills needed to grow their own crops.

As some of you may know, the Gorilla Organization has been working alongside the African Indigenous and Minority Peoples Organisation (AIMPO) to provide the Bambuti with their own give them the literacy and agricultural skills they need to integrate into mainstream society.

One such community to benefit from our work is the village of Nkwenda, which I recently paid a visit to. Here, as we celebrated the UN World Day of Indigenous People, I saw for myself the joy people get from being self-sufficient.

The village leader Satura took me on a tour of the 11 hectares the Bambuti work, showing me how they put their new skills to good use growing maize and cassava. August is harvest time here and the sight of the farmers bringing in their crops really lifted my spirits. In fact, Satura told me that, not only will there be enough maize to feed the members of the community, thereby addressing the issue of malnutrition, but that there will also be some surplus, meaning the Bambuti will be able to sells the crops and start pulling themselves out of poverty.

Here are a few pictures from my recent visit to Nkwenda…

A good harvest will help ease nutrition and poverty within the community

Surplus crops can be sold, generating a valuable source of income for the Bambuti

While many of the communities situated on the edge of the Virunga Massif don’t have access to electricity, this doesn’t mean that people living around the protected area can’t see films about their endangered cousins. In fact, thanks to the pedal-powered cinemas we’re running with the Great Apes Film Initiative (GAFI), films can now be screened in even the most-remote villages. Not only does this mean children and adults alike can learn about gorillas and their precious habitat, but many also get to watch a film for the first time in their lives!

Over recent days, we’ve been setting up our mobile cinema in the region surrounding the Mount Muhabura, an extinct volcano sitting on the border between Rwanda and Uganda. With the support of the Wildlife Clubs of Uganda, around 2,240 pupils from the Kaber, Gisozi and Chanika primary schools have watched the films, with most only too happy to power the projector, as you can see below.

Children take it in turns to power the cinema

It’s always great to see the look on people’s faces when the films are screened. The cinemas are always packed and there’s always silence as scientists explain all about the great apes up on the big screen.

Such is the excitement generated when our team arrives into a village, people working in the surrounding fields often put down their tools to come and watch our films. What’s more, they’re usually keen to help out with the pedalling, even though they will have to get back to their work once the show is over

Since the programme was launched back in November 2010, around 21,400 people have watched these pedal-powered films, and we hope this will increase to 60,000 by the end of October. Judging by the debates that take place after each screening, it’s obvious that the films are a real hit, with many people wanting to learn more about gorillas or even visit them for themselves. So let’s hope that the success of our Ugandan bike-powered cinemas can be replicated across the border in Rwanda and also in DR Congo in the months and years ahead.

Here are a couple more pictures of the cinema in action…

Smiles all round as school children learn about gorillas and their habitat

The arrival of the pedal-powered cinema team always causes great excitement

The Nkwenda health centre is one of the Gorilla Organization’s great success stories here in the DR Congo. We set it up back in July 2007 to provide first aid and a range of other frontline health services to the indigenous Bambuti communities living on the edges of the Virunga National Park.

Since then, however, the project has been expanded to offer free or affordable healthcare to everyone living in the immediate vicinity. In 2009, we started working with a number of international charities and NGOs, including Merlin and Helping Hands, who provided the clinic with vital, lifesaving drugs and other treatments.

So far, around 5,000 people have benefited from the work of the clinic, which is situated just 12km from Kiwanja in Rutshuru territory, North Kivu. And, with the clinic going from strength to strength, many more will also benefit from access to emergency medical care provided by specialists, both from the DR Congo and elsewhere in the world.

However, it’s imperative that we maintain excellent relations with our donors and other well-wishers so that this clinic, which is situated on the edge of the forest home of our cousins the gorillas, is never short of even a single quinine or paracetamol tablet.

Here are some photos of the clinic in action….

The clinic the Gorilla Organization's supporters helped to build

Communities living on the edge of the gorillas' forest home get access to medicine

International doctors provide healthcare for all at the clinic

It has been an exciting week for the people of Rusayo village in the North Kivu area of DR Congo. 200 homes have this week received a fuel-efficient stove from the local NGO Aide-Kive, thanks to funding from the Gorilla Organization and the people who support this blog!

These precious stoves will make a huge difference to the fight against deforestation in the Virunga National Park as families will now need to use much less fuel for cooking than they did before.

Deo Kalus, who works for Aide-Kivu presented the stoves to the local families and at the same time ensured that they understood that there was now no need to cut down trees or collect wood from the national park, the gorillas’ forest home.

Families were extremely grateful for their new stoves and reiterated their commitment to protecting the forest. They also reaslise the econimic gains the stoves will bring to all of them as they save time and money on collecting fuel.

Have a look at the photos below. It was quite a sight to see al the stoves lines up and to see how grateful the families of Rusayo were to receive their new stoves!

The fuel-efficient stoves are lined up, ready for distribution to local families

Deo explains the importance of the stoves and how they prevent deforestation and save the gorillas. Deo’s speech is followed by instructions on how to use the fuel-efficient stoves.

Smiles as the first stoves are handed out.

There is one for every household in the village!

Thank you all for your comments and interest in the ladies who have travelled to India from the DRC to take part in our unique initiative to promote sustainable development and support gorilla conservation in the Virungas.

I have been having weekly contact with the women in India and Bunker Roy, who is the manager at the college there – the women are doing amazingly well! During the past few weeks they have learnt how to make solar lanterns and the circuits that will power the lanterns, and in the last 20 days they have made 10 lanterns and 15 circuits, which is an excellent achievement – Bunker tells me most trainees take 2 months to achieve this. What I find so amazing about this whole project is the way the ladies are learning and communicating – all the Congolese ladies speak Swahili, a language that is not spoken by anyone else at the college. All the learning and communication is done through diagrams and colours!

The Congolese women are training  with women from  Kenya, Burkina Faso, Guatemala, Colombia, Jordan   and   Indian  trainers. So they are meeting people from all over the world. The ladies tall me they are enjoying the Indian food and really interested in learning all about the Tilonia culture.

Here are some photos of the ladies at work in India!!

Here is a photo of the pedal-powered cinema in action. The viewers take it in turns to pedal the bike, which generates enough energy to power the film!

Madeline Westwood, the director of the Great Apes Film initiative, who is partnering with the Gorilla Organization on this project, and Colin Tonks, the “wonder technician” and inventor of the cinema, came to Uganda from the UK to set this project running.

The first film showings were amazing – at one screening as many as 800 children came along to enjoy the Gorilla Organization’s film. And they were so excited – it was wonderful to see. The bike adds an extra element of audience participation to the screenings and children where queuing up to do some pedaling and power the film!

The children were amazed at what they saw. Some were so interested in the gorillas, and are now so desperate to protect them that they wanted us to make sure that their parents could watch the film too – I have no doubt that each and every one of them went home to tell their families about what they had seen. This is a huge step for gorilla conservation – the more local people who what to protect the gorillas, the more likely the gorillas are to survive long into the future.

As well as providing invaluable conservation education, the bikes provide an entirely clean source of power. No petrol is needed, no electricity is needed and as a result there is no negative environmental impact of showing these films.

Conservation education is now reaching remote communities, villages with no electricity and a whole host of others who have never before been able to see films or access this type of education – for this we are extremely proud.  In the three weeks that the project has been running 11,600 school children, 184 teachers, 110 soldiers and 46 park rangers, all living around the Ugandan gorilla habitats, have seen the films – wow!

Here is a photo of children transfixed by the film and the bike in motion!

On Monday, I took part in something amazing. I helped five illiterate Congolese women, all of whom are grandmothers, head off on an amazing journey to India. The women, who are from four villages on the edge of the Virungas National Park are taking part in a unique project that will help them to lift their villages out of poverty and in doing so relieve the human pressure on the national park that is threatening the precious gorillas.

The women are taking part in a joint project between the Gorilla Organization and the Barefoot College in India. They will spend six months in India learning everything there is to know about solar technology. They will become electricians, ambassadors, experts and life-savers. When they return to their villages in DRC they will set up solar panels in the village that will for the first time ever bring electricity and light to these poverty stricken communities. They will maintain the solar panels and train others in everything that they have learnt.

Bringing electricity to a village goes a long way to reduce poverty. Families will no longer be restricted to work during daylight hours. They will be able to cook food in the evening whereas before this would have been difficult due to lack of light, meaning they can spend longer tending their farms during the day. Electricity will also open up a whole host of new opportunities for the community. All these things help families become self sufficient and help them earn an income, which means they will no longer be tempted to use the gorilla habitat as a supplement to their needs. The village gets electricity and the gorillas remain undisturbed in their forest home.

On Saturday, the women said emotional but uplifting goodbyes to their families. I was invited to one of the villages to take part in the celebrations and watched as families danced and cheered to mark the start of this exciting journey. These women have never left their villages before let alone go on a plane and leave the country. From the villages the women gathered in Goma where they were met by the governor of the province of North Kivu, Julien Paluku Kahongya.

(Saying goodbye!)

From Goma, Henry (the Gorilla Organization’s DRC programme manager) and myself took the ladies to Kigali airport and helped them board the plane to India. What an exciting adventure they are embarking on and what a difference they are making to their villages and to our cousins the gorillas.

(All ready to go!Good bye to the Provincial Minister of Environnment )

I hope to keep you updated on the women’s progress in India.

Last week I joined the entire Gorilla Organization field team, and our director Jillian Miller, for the Gorilla Organization’s annual strategy meeting. Every year in October we get together to discuss the year that has just passed and to make plans for the following year. It is a great opportunity to share experiences with our colleagues from other countries, who are working with different gorilla populations, and we always come away with new ideas!

Here is a picture of us at the meeting. You can see Jillian, our director, to the right of the photo. Next to her is Aimee, who fundraises in our London office and did an amazing job of taking the minutes. At the end of the table is Emmanuel, our Rwandan Programme Manager,  Sam, our Ugandan Programme Manager and Henry, our Congolese Programme Manager.

We began the meeting by discussing the work that had taken place in 2010. The current economic climate has meant that it has not been the easiest of years but despite this we were all proud of what we have achieved. Our gorilla conservation work has continued, and all our African partners have completed their targets for the year with our support.

There are great plans for our projects for 2011, which will make a huge impact on the protection of the gorilla habitat and the gorillas’ long-term survival projects. 17 project partners hope to receive our support in 2011, as do the wildlife authorities of Rwanda, Uganda and DR Congo. For all these plans to materialise we need to raise over US$800,000 – it is going to be a busy year!!

Please do get in touch if you would like to find out more about the specific plans we have for 2011 or if you are able to support our work during the coming year.

Thank you!