The Great Primate Handshake – Volunteer in Africa, working to conserve monkeys and apes through film and educational content production

July 5^th is a day we’ve all been waiting for its where our journey on the Great Primate Handshake really begins.

It is here we start getting down to the nitty gritty!  After clambering into a local long boat we ventured out on Lake Victoria and after a two hour slightly bumpy journey full of anticipation and excitement we reached our final destination, CSWCT, otherwise known as the Chimpanzee Sanctuary & Wildlife Conservation Trust.

This is not the first time the Great Primate Handshake has visited CSWCT and the educational team are making this visit to build upon the work previously done by volunteers. We are going with the intention of meeting Silver the educational officer who last year expressed his desire to link up and connect with schools in the UK. He believes that to achieve long term conservation of chimpanzees and their habitat it is essential to “engage, sensitise and educate people at all levels of society”. Currently the sanctuary already holds school outreach programmes and school study tours. It is now our job to help provide a tool to help CSWCT reach out further.

Before we get to meet the 44 chimpanzees that call this sanctuary home we need to understand why the CSWCT is so important. We are given a stark reminder of the plight of the chimpanzee. Habitat destruction, the commercial bush meat and illegal exotic pet trade are all contributing to the influx of chimpanzees that are brought in. Many are juvenile chimpanzees orphaned or rescued pets, while the more senior chimpanzees are those that have spent a significant part of their life in captivity and are fortunate enough to be rescued and cared for by the centre.   For example Mika who was rescued from a life time in a travelling circus.  Even now he sits blowing raspberries and it is thought this is a trait he has picked up after being made to blow on a whistle.

After a fantastic tour of the site, you really gain an insight into the passion that the people that work at the sanctuary have towards the chimps they care for. The site is of particular interest in terms of its conservation because it is not just a sanctuary but also an educational centre that is ambitious to promote an appreciation, understanding and conservation of chimpanzees.

We want to help Silver achieve his goals of communicating with schools within the UK.  As the educational team, who have facilitated links like this in the past, we know it can be an effective tool to spread an awareness of conservation issues to classrooms in the UK. Together we decided the best way forward was to create a document that initiates the link up between classrooms and the sanctuaries. To do this we will make an interactive tool that can be accessed through the website. This will act as a starting base for connecting schools with educational sanctuaries just like CSWCT.

While we were there we also created a video interview with Silver, which can be used to support the web tool. It contains the vision of the sanctuary, its educational programmes and activities and will reach a global audience.

Our visit to the sanctuary was very successful.  We really gauged an understanding of how we can use our time and equipment to help the CSWCT publicise their work and thus spread an insight into the need for chimpanzee conservation. The sanctuaries simply don’t have the time or the facilities to do this themselves but it is these steps that can really contribute to a big difference!