Bees on guard - tiny insects protect african elephants
Are you fascinated by bees? Do you love elephants? The Kasiisi Project Citizen Science project "Bees on Guard" contributes to the conservation of both these species around Kibale National Park, Uganda in partnership with local beekeeping co-operatives, the Busiriba Beekeeping and Conservation Association and Conservation to Coexist. Elephants are magnificent and fascinating, but also enormously destructive, bringing them into frequent conflict with their human neighbors. When faced with the destruction of an entire maize crop, subsistence farmers, struggling to make ends meet, are not supporters of elephant conservation. This is where bees come in. African honey bees, tiny as they are, have ferocious stings and elephants avoid them. When farmers string beehives along wires, forming "Bee Fences" to defend their fields, elephants look elsewhere for food. But in order to deter elephants bee colonies need to be strong and healthy, a challenge during the wet season. Active apiaries require regular maintenance and dealing with bees fierce enough to drive off elephants requires the right equipment, with costs beyond the reach of these beekeepers. This is where you can help. You will be in great company. National Geographic, Akron Zoo and Oklahoma City Zoo have all assisted us in getting this program off the ground, but now we need to reach more farmers. We are running a GoFundMe campaign to raise the money needed to train and equip 15 more beekeeper associations so that their apiaries support healthy bee colonies, produce honey to supplement family incomes, and are active enough to save the lives of elephants.
If you wish to make your donation a gift we can help there too. Just e-mail us at elizabethaross@me.com and we can send your recipient a card.
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By the time that schools open again in January 2022, Ugandan children will have missed almost 2 years of class time due to the Covid pandemic. Students from more affluent families have had access to online learning, something not an option for impoverished rural families. Loss of education is detrimental for all children but those from marginalized societies like ours suffer most, with girls being the most impacted. Falling family incomes have forced children into the informal job market in large numbers, setting back attempts to end child labor by 20 years. Most will never return to school, and early marriage and teen pregnancy rates have ballooned. More than a third (35%) of our children polled said they were not interested in learning or had dropped out of school permanently.
Aware of this crisis and determined to to help keep families motivated about the benefits of education, as well as reducing students anxiety about returning to school, the Kasiisi Project and its Ugandan partner, The Kibale Forest Schools' Program, have undertaken to bring school work to children in their villages. Thanks to a monumental effort by our staff, for 4 months, during heavy rains, 2,500 children in Grades 3-5 have received educational packs of pencils, crayons and paper and biweekly packets of school work produced by the Ugandan Government. Every month we print, collate, and bind 110,000 work sheets and distribute them using motorbike taxis, community leaders and village health teams to 2,500 children in 130 villages. Every 2 weeks, work is collected, marked and returned to the students. Weekly story time on the local radio makes literature and comprehension available to another 20,000 children, and environmental workbooks, art and storytelling competitions and family history projects keep our conservation and health goals in everyone's minds. We hope that by January there will be no need for such an enormous undertaking but we will still be there to provide the support that the schools need as they begin the huge job of getting their students back on track. We join with Ugandan parents, teachers and local government to express our enormous gratitude to the generous donors who made this critical but very expensive initiative possible. If you are interested in supporting the initiative or any of our other programs you can do so through the donate page. Teachers from Kasiisi Project schools were joined by our staff this week for their first COVID vaccinations. It is much too early to say that things are close to normal - as yet only 4 of 7 primary school classes are back in school, and it is going to take until the end of 2023 for children to catch up with missed lessons - but there is light at the end of the tunnel. Thanks to generous funding from you, the hard work and ingenuity of our staff and support from enthusiastic parents, we have managed to keep all our staff paid and most of our programs goin, even if it took some lateral thinking! One of the great strengths of the Kasiisi Project is that it invests in a wide-range of different projects giving us flexibility and an ability to think outside the box. Never an organization to turn down new opportunities, we have see the huge benefits of this holistic approach during the current crisis. By transferring skills between programs, prioritizing projects requiring less face to face contact and devising new ways to continue with funded activities we have so far weathered the storms of 2020. We pray we are almost out of the woods, but, even with future hurdles that may arise in the coming months, this year has taught us that we have the skills and strength to clear them.
In a Citizen Science Project funded by the National Geographic Society, Kasiisi Project staff are partnering with 7 groups of farmer/beekeepers around Kibale National Park to monitor the health of the wild African Honeybees colonizing 15 apiaries by assessing a colonies ability to maintain constant hive temperature and humidity. We have made it through 2020 thanks to your support. Our staff are still employed, our programs intact and we are looking ahead with confidence to coming out the other side of this terrible epidemic energized and productive. But we still face critical funding challenges. Here is a chance to see your support for us matched.
If you have never given to us before through online donation platform Global Giving, here is an opportunity to see your first donation tripled if you make it between December 14th and 18th. This has to be your first donation to us via Global Giving and you have to commit to 4 monthly donations. After your fourth donation Global Giving will give us a 200% match of your first donation. Go to Global Giving for terms and conditions. Giving regularly is a great way to support us. The financial hit is less for you and knowing how much we have coming in allows us to plan better. Please consider this as an alternative way to support us, or even in addition to annual one-off donations. With only a 4-month commitment you can test it to see if it fits your giving needs. Interested in Girls' issues? Donate to Project 2700 - Sanitary Pads Keep Ugandan Girls in School. Conservation more your thing? Then give to Project 44346 Developing the Next Generation of Conservationist. And THANK YOU!! Uganda closed its schools in March due to the corona virus pandemic. Since most of our work requires close face to face contact with students and teachers we had to find new ways to present our programs. Adhering to the Ugandan government's rules on COVID-19 safety we closed our offices and our staff worked from home. Using ingenuity and imagination they adapted quickly to the new constraints and have been able to continue with over half of our planned projects despite the virus, by using radio broadcasts to reach communities and by moving our programs into the villages.
The Kasiisi Project has a new website www.kasiisiproject.org and a lively new logo. A revised format, updated information, new maps and photos bring fresh life to our website, making the work we are doing in Uganda more accessible. Thanks to Eric Losh, author, illustrator and Logo designer par excellence , www.elosh.com , we also have a logo that highlights our areas of concern, Conservation, Education and Health. The lively design celebrates the children who are the primary focus of our outreach, and the color scheme pays tribute to the Ugandan flag. Eric is a good friend to Kibale and we are delighted to work with him again. If you are not following us on Facebook you can find us at https://www.facebook.com/KasiisiProject where you will be kept abreast of all our current news .
The Kasiisi Project proudly announces the winners of the 1st Annual Kibale Conservation Youth Art Contest. We asked children ages 5 to 18 to learn about Uganda’s Kibale National Park and express what they’ve learned by drawing, painting or sculpting one of the magnificent species that call the Park home. We were dazzled by the artists’ creativity, the variety of chosen wildlife, large and small, and the powerful messages that accompanied each piece.
Looking for fun and unique ways to connect kids with nature and wildlife during school closures? We’re here for help! Throughout the summer, we'll be sharing at-home activities and online learning resources to help bring Uganda's wildlife into your home.
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The Kasiisi Project is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Contributions to the Kasiisi Project are tax deductible to the extent permitted by law. The Kasiisi Project's tax identification number is 54-2195079. |