Dear all,
It's with great joy that we announce that we are already on the 3rd "Escola na Natureza" camp in boa Esperança beach, a project carried out in partnership with Clube Ambiental da Boavista, with financial support of the UN GEF Small Grants program.
This camp takes place every weekend, and includes up to 25 local youngsters from all over the island. In this project, the classroom is exchanged for a beach-front setting, where kids receive lectures on sea turtle biology and conservation, talk about trash (and clean-up the beach after that!!!), the importance of biodiversity, and other issues such as the importance of the family, children rights and much more!
So far the influence has been great, a total of 40 kids participated in the first 2 camps. We are planning 6 camps in total, to take place in the months of August and September.
The highlight of the weekend is of course the night patrols. Here, kids join the Turtle Foundation teams on the patrols, and have direct hands-on experience in obtaining data from the nesting turtles, including egg counst, assisting with tagging and measuring, and taking behavioral data. The next day, to "relax", they must show what they have learnt by answering quiz questions in fun beach games. It is a lot of fun!!
The camp is open to any kid from the islands, although visitors are welcome to join the group at any time during the weekend.
Recently, the project got media coverage on Cape Verde and Portuguese news. To see the footage, please visit the link:
http://www.rtc.cv/index.php?paginas=13&id_cod=4689
Photos will be posted very soon on Facebook (Turtle Foundation Cabo Verde), so keep an eye open!
Have a great weekend!
Turtle Foundation and Clube Ambiental da Boavista