It's with great joy that we announce the successful start of the initiative "School in Nature" / "Escola na Natureza" camp in Boa Esperança beach, a project carried out in partnership with Clube Ambiental da Boavista, with financial support from the UNDP GEF Small Grants program.
This camp takes place every weekend, with the participation of 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! We are planning 6 camps in total, to take place in the months of August and September 2010.
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 count, assisting with tagging and measuring, and documenting behavioral data. The next day, to "relax", they must show what they have learned 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 received 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
