Gorilla

Pupils planting trees outside one of the schools where the Wildlife Club takes place

Hi this is Sam,

As you might know, we are celebrating the 12th anniversary of one of our key projects in Africa, The Wildlife Clubs in Uganda. It’s been 12 years since The Gorilla Organization joined forces with this project, which is aimed at educating young people on environmental issues.

The purpose of the partnership with the Uganda Wildlife Authority was to help spread the wildlife clubs in schools that surround the habitat where the gorillas live as well as to raise awareness on the importance of preserving the gorilla and its habitat.

Ever since this project was implemented, specifically in Southwest Uganda, hundreds of activities have taken place including: planting trees and vegetables in school gardens, arts, crafts, music, drama and dance lessons, screening of wildlife documentaries, discussions and competitions. It’s amazing to see the excitement of all the pupils of the clubs that have joined us as well as the development they have raised on environmental awareness, including the protection and conservation of gorillas!

So far, 78 Wildlife Clubs have been established in Uganda and more than 3,000 pupils have become members. Also members and teachers have had the opportunity to take part in excursions to the Mgahinga National Park, where they gained first-hand experience of conservation in action.

I will keep you posted with more amazing news from this project!

Social activities to raise environmental awareness on the pupils

The excitement and joy of pupils after having their session

The excitement and happiness of our ladies arriving at the airport

Hi this is Emmanuel,

After a hard six months of training, our special team of ladies, The Solar Sisters from Rwanda, are back and ready to bring electricity to their home villages!

In March 2012, the Gorilla Organization, along with the Government of Rwanda ,UNESCO and the Government of India sent a team of four illiterate women to India to receive special training at the Barefoot College to become solar energy engineers. This project will be benefiting two sectors including Musanze of Musanze district, (Northern Province of Rwanda) and Bugeshi of Rubavu district (Western Province of Rwanda).

If you remember, a few months ago, the first team of Solar Sisters from DR Congo came back from the training in India and successfully installed electricity in the Rusayo village. They also held a couple of demonstrations in Burusi and Ngitse and the plan was to solar electrify 50 houses in each of the two villages surrounding Mount Tshiabirimu (area of Virunga National Park, DR Congo).

The Solar Ladies from Rwanda arrived in mid-September at the Entebbe Airport in Uganda and the excitement took over the place as you can see in the photographs. They were so happy to come back to their families and friends, but most importantly for having learned so much bringing along a lot of benefits to their villages, like giving the children the possibility of study after it’s gone dark and their parents the chance to work past dusk.

I will be sure to keep you posted with more news and updates about this, but for now let’s congratulate our ladies for coming back home safe and sound and for their great achievement in becoming experts in solar energy!

Solar Sisters arriving at Enttebe airport in Uganda

Pupils taking part of the pedal-powered cinema in Kabale

Hi, this is Tuver,

Out of all the projects and initiatives that the Gorilla Organization undertakes in Africa, the Pedal-Powered Cinema is becoming more and more popular among members of the local communities of Uganda.

The idea of having an adapted bicycle that, when pedalled, produces enough power to screen films has been drawing people’s attention and interest and the results speak by themselves!

According to our latest report, 5,581 people from the communities of the Kabale district –western Uganda- took part in the film screenings that were held in 11 schools.

Aside from educating people by screening conservation and wildlife documentaries and great apes documentaries, the communities took part in a range of different activities. At each school, 30 seedlings were supplied and planted to encourage the school community plant more trees and to launch tree planting in the schools that had no tree planting activities. A total of 30 guava, mango and orange trees were planted!

The interest of participants has been also expressed to our staff as many of them have asked about the possibility of someone coming to give them environmental talks. The success of the Pedal-powered Cinema is reflected in the following photographs where you can see a lot of pupils very keen in taking part of this activity!

The last screening took place in schools around Kabale district

Pupils planted guava, mango and orange trees

Pupils were very keen on planting trees at the Kabale schools’ district

Crowds gathered to hear the aims of the Solar Sisters project to the village

Hi, this is Sam,

I’ve just got back from a trip Kagandu, one of the many small villages dotted along the border of the Mgahinga National Park here in Uganda. Here, along with my Gorilla Organization colleague Regina, I was exploring the possibility of getting the community involved in our Solar Sisters project, which is already on track to transform hundreds of lives in four different villages across the border in DR Congo.

Certainly, Kagandu meets the criteria for being considered for the project. The Barefoot College in India, where women are trained in solar engineering skills, requires communities to be without a reliable source of electricity and likely to be without one for the foreseeable future. Well, let me tell you that Kagandu definitely ticks this box! It’s a full hour’s walk from the nearest main road and none of the 380 houses here have ever been fully electrified.

But what Kagandu may lack in infrastructure, it more than makes up for in spirit! The village chairperson welcomed us with open arms and even said she felt her community had been blessed by God to have this opportunity to become electrified! After a brief introduction, we held a productive meeting with several leading members of the community, in which they put forward two women to become Solar Sisters. They also agreed to provide funds to pay the ladies to maintain the village’s solar equipment upon their return from India.

I can’t tell you how excited I am to see this project extended into Uganda. Having access to electricity is a basic human right, and so to know that this village will soon have what so many of us take for granted is truly a cause for celebration. What’s more, I’m optimistic about how this project will benefit the gorillas living in the Mgahinga National Park. For too long now, people living in villages such as Kagandu have been forced by poverty to enter the protected forests for food and other resources. By allowing them to work and study after it gets dark and even to set up their own small enterprises, solar power will help them pull themselves out of poverty and will mean they will no longer be so reliant on the precious gorilla habitat.

Here are a few more pictures I took from my recent trip. I promise to keep you informed of all the latest developments and, on behalf of everyone in Kagandu, I thank you for your wonderful support!

The report I made to assess how the village could benefit from solar power

The village nominates the ladies they feel should go to India...

...and then, we choose our next Solar Sisters!

Gorillas are extremely shy, so researchers are count night nests to work out how many live here

Hi, this is Sam,

As some of you may know, a mountain gorilla census is currently being carried out in the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest here in Uganda. The count will allow us to see how well the gorillas living in this national park are doing and, just as importantly, will help us see what more needs to be done to safeguard these remarkable creatures for generations to come.

Now, counting gorillas is no easy task and it’s certainly not simply a matter of asking them to fill in a form like you have with a human census! Not only is Bwindi vast, the vegetation here is also extremely dense. Meanwhile, the gorillas themselves are understandably wary of humans and so all but the few habituated groups living here will retreat into the forests if they hear people coming.

So, how do you count mountain gorillas? Well, the most important thing to realise is that the researchers are not actually on the lookout for gorillas as such. Rather, they look for the clues they leave behind as they roam through the dense forest. Thankfully, being heavy and walking on all-fours, gorillas leave an easily detectable trail of flattened vegetation for researchers to follow. Once they have found the spot where the group they are researching spent the night, the team will get to work. Firstly, they’ll count the number of night nests dotted around the site, with this allowing them to put a figure on group size – though it’s worth remembering an infant will share a nest with its mother up until the age of two. Alongside this, the team will also look out for any distinctive silver hairs that may have been left behind by an alpha male and then they will also measure and collect samples of the dung left behind by the group. This last but may seem a bit yucky, but it’s a great way of determining the sex and age of a group’s members. What’s more, taking some samples back for analysis in a laboratory should help us check for signs of parasites, bacteria and even the presence of human viruses among these wild gorillas.

As I’m sure you can appreciate, this is no overnight process. Instead, it will be several months before we know the results of this latest census. For now, all we can do is cross our fingers, hope for the best and carry on with our efforts to help both the gorillas and the communities living alongside their forest home.

I’ve just got back to Goma after going to Kampala to attend the Gorilla Organization’s annual strategy meeting. As always, it was great to catch up with my colleagues from other countries and talk about how our respective projects are helping transform communities and safeguard gorillas. It’s really inspiring to see everyone working towards a common goal and to see how your generous support is helping make a real difference in Uganda, Rwanda and DR Congo.

Joined by our director Jillian Miller, we began the meeting discussing what we have achieved over the past 12 months and it was clear from listening to my colleagues that our conservation and poverty reduction projects have continued to meet, and in some cases even exceed, their targets.

We also talked about our plans for the year ahead. We are hoping to implement more than 20 projects across the three countries in 2012, all of them geared towards helping both the gorillas and the people who live alongside their forest home. Activities supported will include beekeeping in Kisoro, Uganda, conservation radio programmes in Goma, DR Congo and agricultural training in Rwanda.

It’ll certainly be a busy, and hopefully a highly-productive, year! I look forward to keeping you updated with news on our work here in Africa and thank you for your ongoing support.

Tom Munyakibina welcomed me to the Kisoro Queen Bee Rearing Centre

Hi, this is Tuver,

Just recently, I paid a visit to the Queen Bee Rearing Centre in Kisoro District, Uganda. Set up by the Gorilla Organization in 2009, this exciting initiative is making a real difference to the lives of local communities and helping to ease the pressure being placed on the gorillas’ forest home.

Rather than heading into the Mgahinga National Park to set up hives in the trees there, the centre allows the district’s beekeepers to do this away from the gorillas’ protected habitat. Under the guidance of Tom Munyakibina and Francis Sekabuga, keepers are taught the latest techniques, enabling them to increase their own yields. At present, the centre’s hives are producing 90kg of honey per season, with this collected over the course of three weeks.

Additionally, Tom and Francis are successfully breeding queen bees, meaning communities across the Kisoro District will be able to benefit from their own hives, providing them with a sustainable and gorilla-friendly source of food and income!

Below you can see a couple of pictures I took on my visit…

Some of the Gorilla Organization's many hives helping to ease the pressure on gorilla habitat

Tom was keen to show me how the centre is enjoying an upturn in honey production

Hi, this is Tuver,

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

Hi this is Sam at the Gorilla Organization’s Ugandan resource centre. The last couple of weeks have been very exciting for us. We have launched a brand new gorilla consrervation project in Western Uganda – Africa’s very first pedal powered cinema for conservation! This innovative cinema will be showing educational conservation films to school children and communities in some of the most rural villages on the edge of Mgahinga National Park. Prior to the launch of this project, many of the children, and even their teachers, had never seen a film before – and many had never seen images of gorillas.

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!

Hello, this is Tuver. I have just returned to Goma from Kampala.

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!