Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary’s Community Outreach Programme (TCOP) recently conducted a focused education and engagement mission in communities surrounding Outamba-Kilimi National Park (OKNP), enhancing young people’s understanding of chimps, biodiversity, and the role of healthy ecosystems in sustaining local livelihoods. The team left Freetown on March 22nd and implemented a structured program that included classroom-based learning, interactive competitions, community outreach, and hands-on field experiences to reach a diverse group of students, teachers, and leaders.
TCOP operates at the intersection of conservation and community development, providing both formal and informal environmental education, promoting sustainable livelihoods, and fostering long-term stewardship among those who live near critical habitats. This mission was part of TCOP’s larger strategy to engage schools in high-biodiversity areas where wildlife pressures, particularly chimpanzees, are inextricably linked to human activity and daily life.
The visit revolved around a two-day Environmental Day in Fintonia, with one day for primary school students and the other for junior and senior secondary school students. These days served as the primary platform for youth engagement, reinforcing environmental knowledge while instilling confidence, creativity, and leadership in students enrolled in Tacugama’s Conservation Education Programme. TKEEP, which supplements the national curriculum with lessons on human-wildlife coexistence, is delivered by students’ own teachers with mentoring and technical support from Tacugama education specialists.
The secondary school program brought together students, educators, and community leaders, including the Section Chief, to promote strong local ownership and visibility. Students participated in debates on current environmental issues, gave speeches on conservation topics, and performed poetry about human-wildlife relationships. These activities encouraged critical thinking and public speaking while also helping students develop a personal connection to the conservation topics covered in TKEEP. All participants received certificates, and top performers were given prizes to provide recognition and motivation.
Primary school students from neighbouring communities — Sumatha, Yana, Kotor, and Fintonia — were encouraged to attend, ensuring that the program reached younger children and promoted early engagement with conservation. This age group’s activities included wildlife-themed colouring, word games, spelling bees, and quizzes designed to increase ecological awareness and reinforce key concepts taught in TKEEP lessons. Safe transportation and meal preparation were arranged to ensure that children could participate fully and inclusively.
TCOP purposefully combined education with community events to broaden its impact beyond the classroom. Evening boys’ and girls’ football games drew large crowds and served as an effective entry point for wider outreach. DJ Buju provided commentary and entertainment, incorporating conservation messages into the matches understandably and engagingly. By combining sport and education, TCOP expanded its reach and raised community awareness.
Renato Granieri, a world-renowned wildlife photographer and long-time Tacugama supporter, paid a visit to enrich the mission. Renato visited the TCOP Education Team in Outamba to learn more about their work firsthand. He attended a forest ecology workshop for junior and senior secondary students called “The Lung and Heart of Our Planet,” which deepened understanding of ecosystem services like climate regulation, water cycles, and biodiversity support, as well as how those concepts relate to community livelihoods.
Field trips were an important learning tool. Renato and his team inspected crop fields that had recently been disturbed by elephants, noting tracks, dung, and movement corridors that show how elephants move between community forests and farmlands. These trips exposed the realities of Human-Elephant Conflict (HEC): crop-raiding, which can destroy rice, banana, and other staple crops in a single night, resulting in food insecurity, lost income, and heightened tensions that can endanger both people and elephants. Seeing these effects firsthand highlighted the importance of practical, community-based conflict resolution solutions.
TCOP also demonstrated the relationship between conservation and livelihoods by monitoring beehives set up as part of alternative-income initiatives. Beekeeping was highlighted as a wildlife-friendly enterprise that can generate income while reducing demand on natural resources, providing a practical example of how conservation and economic needs can coexist.
The mission reached a broad swathe of students and community members and produced multiple layers of impact: increased environmental awareness among primary and secondary learners, strengthened youth engagement and leadership in conservation discussions, enhanced community sensitisation through sport and public events, improved understanding of human-wildlife interactions—particularly elephant activity in the landscape—and reinforced connections between conservation.
TCOP continues to cultivate a new generation of environmentally conscious citizens ready to contribute to conservation efforts in their communities by combining classroom instruction, recreational events, and hands-on learning opportunities. The Outamba mission emphasises the importance of an integrated approach that combines education, community engagement, and practical conservation to promote long-term behaviour change and support the protection of chimps, elephants, and the habitats they rely on in Sierra Leone.
