Tacugama

Category: Education, Tacugama | Date: Feb 17 2008 | By: admin

First of all we’d like to say a big thank you to Lucia for her very generous donation towards little Gaura’s care. He’s coping with his teething and behaving well.

Here’s an update on the Tacugama Kids Programme and the Hastings School Nature Club – we told you about Mr Wright and his fantastic launch of the club a little while ago. The education team (now including Mr Wright!) has been continuing to visit the local schools and we’re pleased with the enthusiasm from all the teachers. At most of the schools the children seem to understand and enjoy the first few lessons of the environmental education curriculum we prepared for them: environment, ecosystems and habitats.

We’ve been doing an activity called Web-of-Life where we name each student as a component in an ecosystem. The students then have to say which other components they rely on and get joined to each of these with string, a big web soon forms. The kids can easily see the far-reaching consequences when just one thing is lost from the ecosystem.

Playing the “Web of Life”
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Hastings School has done its first major Nature Club activity - a clean-up and smartening of the village. We want to thank the construction material shops in Freetown that kindly donated the tools for this adventure. With an early start the children set about tidying the road and putting down white stones to mark the edges. They also collected plenty of rubbish which was burned in a big pit.

Cleaning day with Hastings Nature Club
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We keep bringing children to Tacugama for field trips every week. They get a tour of the sanctuary, do some chimp conservation activities and games and get a big lunch! We were pleased to welcome all the members of the Hastings Nature Club here throughout January.

Schools visits to Tacugama
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We are planning to hold another workshop here at the end of this term to support the launch of Nature Clubs by the other schools.