Dispatches
Kisoro, part I: Averting extinction by educating and empowering communities
April 7, 2008
We headed southwest toward Uganda’s shared borders with DRC and Rwanda, passing through mountainous, heavily cultivated farmlands that supply more than half of Uganda’s produce from a verdant patchwork of terraced plots that appear to cover every inch of the region. As daylight flickered to a close, we ascended through the fog of bamboo-filled Echulya Forest Preserve before dropping into Kisoro, a town located near Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, home to one of the world’s last populations of critically endangered mountain gorillas.
The next day we joined the morning commute of pedestrians, bicycles and motorcycles to meet the staff at Gorilla Organization’s Kisoro office.
Gorilla Organization (GO) works internationally to save the world’s last gorillas from extinction. Their conservation strategies target long term poverty alleviation and environmental education projects in poor communities around gorilla habitats, involving communities in conservation initiatives, providing viable alternatives to the unsustainable use of forest resources.
GO’s hallmark is small, grass roots projects run by local partners, strengthened by the Organization’s mindful management practices that include monthly funding and reporting cycles and a high level of communication between headquarters and local programs, placing strong emphasis on developing local capacity in Africa.
Sam Nsingwire, Ugandan Program Manager at GO’s Kisoro, gave us an overview of local programs before leading us off for a tour of projects. Our first stop was the Kisoro Beekeeper’s Cooperative Society, an organization that supports this traditional trade by educating local beekeepers in new techniques and equipment that make harvest of bee products safer and more efficient along with providing processing, packaging and marketing support for their products, thereby enabling community members to transform a long established subsistence endeavor into a lucrative business.
David, a farmer on the collective’s board, gave us a tour of his farm - an organic Eden shaded by over 100 gigantic avocado trees. He grows coffee as well as myriad vegetables and fruits in the rich black soil of his property. A 3rd generation beekeeper, he keeps his bees happy with shade, a ready source of water and a yellow moon flower tree with gracefully bowed butter-hued trumpets (heck, they’re so pretty I’d pollinate them).
David has a mix of traditional, older apiaries alongside the newer designs. As familiar and sentimental as he might be with the older designs, he readily embraces the new apiaries that have been introduced by the GO supported Beekeeping Cooperative as they allow him to harvest honey more efficiently, reaping a bigger yield and sparing his hardworking bees the hive destruction required to harvest traditional apiaries
Later that day, we stopped by Mutolere Primary School to visit a compelling program that GO helped establish to encourage environmental awareness in the next generation. Wildlife Clubs of Uganda and Rwanda are extra curricular conservation groups whose members are taught sustainable environmental education via educator presentations as well as theater activities including song and dance. In addition, students are exposed to sustainable agricultural practices through cultivating organic food crops + planting native tree species on school grounds and in the surrounding community. Mutolere students involved in the program enjoy Wildlife Club benefits including weekly school-based activities, a quarterly newsletter and field trips to the country’s national parks.
Dennis Agaba, the lead teacher, swiftly assembled the Wildlife Club members, touring us through their recently planted raised bed gardens. Dennis then informed us that the club members wanted to sing to us. The voices of 80 children rose in a moving call and response song with the bright, clear tones of a young girl calling the lead. Wildlife club members acted out lyrics about planting and preservation as the other students gathered around us to watch + listen.
Wildlife Clubs have proven to be a unique opportunity to virally message habitat preservation and sustainable practices - members take what they learn about conservation into the schoolyard, the community and their homes, educating friends and family to issues + alternatives to deforestation, encroachment + poaching.
It was exciting to see GO’s remarkably successful grass roots programs in action -evolving traditional beekeeping into profitable venture and educating the next generation in thoughtful stewardship are progressive programs that serve the communities, environment and species whose futures hang in the balance.
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