Roots&Shoots-Lwiro: spreading the conservation message

During these last months R&S-Lwiro has been growing. Starting with 9 children just 8 months ago, the group now consists of over 20 children! The children keep busy during their weekly meetings and have recently been deciding how to spread a conservation message about primate protection to the local community.

Roots&Shoots Lwiro club

The children have decided their first activity will be to perform a dramatic piece about chimpanzees. Patrick, the club leader, has written this play in Swahili and the actors are already practicing their lines. Due to fact that they are extremely shy and it is the first time they have performed a play, we have decided to use chimpanzee and gorilla puppets. We are also designing masks to use for dramatic effect.

Mariamu and her chimp puppet

Frank and Patrick reading the lines

The second activity the children have proposed is to create posters with conservation messages to spread the word to the community. However, as the club didn’t have any place to exhibit their posters they proposed to create a public notice board. Thanks the generous donation from Roots&Shoots-Madrid we fabricated a wonderful wooden board at the entrance of the sanctuary (CRPL). On this board the R&S-Lwiro members have hung information about the 12 primate species of the sanctuary, pictures of the staff (their parents) at work and pictures of the 48 chimpanzees at the CRPL. On another part of the board, they have displayed information about the Roots&Shoots program, an updated picture of the R&S-Lwiro group and some of the posters they have made. Patrick and the rest of the members will be in charge of updating the board on a regular basis so the community and visitors can read this information.

Salomon drawing his poster about poaching

The first wooden board

The second board with R&S-Lwiro work

Some CRPL keepers reading the posters

We would like to thank R&S Madrid and its coordinator Marisa Mariñán in particular, for their donation which has allowed us to buy additional stationary material and build the display board to spread messages to the community. Also, we thank the Jane Goodall Institute Spain for its constant support and advice.