Successful start for 5 schools into the new school year 2015-2016!

In November 2015, Club P.A.N. of the Wild Chimpanzee Foundation started in 3 schools in the west of the Taï National Park: Gouléako 2, Sakré and Ziriglo. In total, we reach in these schools 141 children. 

In the school of Gouléako 2, Konan Sévérin Yao is the animating teacher working with 52 children. Modeste Gnonkonte is the teacher of Sakré, teaching 49 children this year.  Modeste is with the Club P.A.N. environmental education project since its start in 2007. Pierre Kouassi Sekre is our teacher in Ziriglo with 40 children. 

15 children from each school were personally interviewed by our local coordinator Ouattara Dabila before the sessions started for our pre-evaluation data collection. The same children will also participate in a post-evaluation after they have finished all 12 Club P.A.N. sessions. Right now, these 3 schools are participating in Club P.A.N. session number 7. They are probably done with the 12 sessions, post-evaluations and parents’ days in June 2016. 

In the two schools of Ziriglo and Sakré, the WCF is also supporting school micro-projects to teach the children alternatives to bush-meat hunting and consumption by breeding their own protein sources. The Giant African snail farm in Sakré is active since 5 years now, the children and teachers are breeding, feeding, and selling the snails, presently totaling to 15 big breeding snails, 73 small snails and several snail eggs. The chicken farm micro-project in Ziriglo had some bad luck this year because several chicken died of a disease. Now there remain 12 hens, 1 cock and 1 small chicken, but they will continue working on their farm.

Thanks to the donations from their German partner-schools (Kepler Gymnasium Leipzig, Alexander von Humboldt Gymnasium Werdau), the Club P.A.N. program also starts now in February 2016, in 2 schools in the east of the Taï National Park, in Petit Tiémé and Adamakro. WCF has been working for several years with these two highly motivated schools.

Instead of the former 15 Club P.A.N. schools, unfortunately, due to lack of funding, we were able to keep up this activity in 5 schools during the current school year. We are most grateful to all donors who helped us to make this happen! We also wish to express our gratitude to our local coordinators Ouattara Dabila, Hilaire Guilahoux and Andrien Kouadio Kouakou from the CPE (Cellule des Projets Environnementaux, Soubré, Côte d'Ivoire), without whom this project would not exist!