CERCOPAN

Conserving Nigeria’s primates and rainforests

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Lessons in Life

Category: Cercopan, Conservation, Education, Monkeys, Nigeria, Uncategorized | Date: Feb 22 2008 | By: admin

Last week CERCOPAN began the 2008 education outreach programme in urban schools in and around Calabar. Jerry started the education programme in 1997 and in its 11th year it is more popular than ever. Over the next 6 months he will visit two schools daily, each for approximately 1 hour 30 minutes, lecturing on the topic “Wildlife protection, the forest and climate change”. There are 80-100 children in each class and as he hopes to visit between 50 and 70 schools, this means that he will effectively reach out to over 5000 children.

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Jerry giving talk at Royal College

During his talk, Jerry explains CERCOPAN’s role in protecting monkeys and their forest habitat, the importance and interactions between wildlife and the forest, why monkeys do not make good pets and the benefits and functions of tropical rainforest to society. At the end of his presentation, every child is provided with a handout that they can take home and use to persuade others to change their attitudes towards wildlife. Furthermore, as a follow up, teachers from each school are requested to repeatedly reinforce the message that students should not keep monkeys as pets and that they should choose wisely whenever they opt to consume bushmeat.

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Henshaw Town school

In 2007 Jerry won the Charles Southwick Conservation Education Commitment award, which he will collect at the International Primate Society congress in Edinburgh this year. We are all extremely proud of Jerry and are very pleased that his years of hard work and utter dedication have been recognized. As part of the prize, Jerry was given a cash reward to be spent on any aspect of the education programme that he considered appropriate. Always keen to motivate and reward the children, Jerry decided to use this prize to purchase trophies that were presented to schools at our 2007 World Environment Day rally. The rally was attended by thousands of children and involved a parade, school inspections, essay contest, carnival and drama competition, all related to wildlife and environmental protection. The rally is held every other year and will next take place in July 2009, yet Jerry is already making plans and is determined it will be bigger and better than ever!

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World Environment day parade

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Zenith High School in World Environment Day Parade

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Chief Etan, Clan Head of Iko Esai, presenting trophies at World Environment Day

4 Responses to “Lessons in Life”

Theresa Siskind St Petersburg FL, on 25 Feb 2008

Claire, we sure need more people like Jerry. I bet he really knows how to inspire these kids. I know I’d learn a lot from one of his presentations.

Wanda, Atlanta, on 25 Feb 2008

Wonderful pics and so positive to see the children learn!

cathy-california, on 26 Feb 2008

I have so much respect for both of you and everyone involved in your organization. This is such a brilliant approach to conservationism and so inspirational. You say that the program is in its 11th year. Have you already posted some statistics that speak to Jerry’s success? How have you been tracking this? If I’ve missed the answer to this, I can look back at an earlier post. Congrats Jerry!

Thank you very much. I don’t believe that I have included statistics in any of the earlier posts. We mainly evaluate success on the basis of questionnaires and on positive feedback (e.g monkeys handed in and owners mentioning education programme or children bringing families to CERCOPAN as a result). Here are some of the results of the last series of questionnaires analysed.

1) The number of participants who were correctly able to state why eating bushmeat is harmful to people increased significantly after participating in the World Environment day Rally.

Pre test: 45 %
Post test: 96%

2) The number of participants who were correctly able to state why eating bushmeat is harmful to wildlife increased significantly after participating in the World Environment day Rally.

Pre test: 19%
Post test: 38%

3) The number of participants who stated they felt monkeys should remain in the forest increased significantly after participating in the Rally

Pre test: 71%
Post test: 96%

4) The number of participants who were able to correctly name behaviours they could perform to help monkeys increased significantly after participating in the World Environment day Rally.

Pre test: 22%
Post test: 73%

5) The number of participants who were able to correctly name the law protecting wildlife in Nigeria increased significantly after participating in the World Environment day Rally.

Pre test: 29%
Post test: 93%

6) The percentage of pupils who were able to correctly name 3 types of monkeys in Nigeria increased significantly after participating in the education programme.

Pre test: 5%
Post test: 85%

7) The percentage of pupils who were able to correctly answer that they thought monkeys do not make good pets increased significantly after participating in the education programme.

Pre test: 27%
Post test: 83% 8) The percentage of pupils who were able to correctly state that monkeys do not live alone in the wild increased significantly after participating in the education programme.

Pre test: 55%
Post test: 80%

9) The percentage of pupils who were able to correctly name two ways animals help the forest increased after participating in the education programme.

Pre test: 12%
Post test: 50%

10) The percentage of pupils who were able to correctly name ways they can help save monkeys and their forest homes increased after they participated in the education programme.

Pre test: 15%
Post test: 48%

11) The percentage of pupils who were able to correctly answer that they thought monkeys are endangered in the wild increased significantly after participating in the education programme.

Pre test: 62%
Post test: 71%

Paisecj, on 26 Mar 2008

omg.. good work, guy

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