Collecting Oral Histories

It is with great excitement and huge gratitude to the National Geographic Society that we announce that Patrick Tusiime, Field Director of our partner NGO, the Kibale Forest Schools Program, has been awarded a grant for his project “Oral History as a Conservation Education Tool”. This project, takes a unique approach to understanding the role of indigenous knowledge and belief systems in developing effective conservation strategies around Kibale National Park, Uganda.

Through our project, an independently organized program, using StoryCorps DIY model, we will recruit and train children to record personal histories of older members of their villages, highlighting experiences existing alongside wild animals, how the resources of the park were traditionally used, and how things changed when it became a National Park. We will explore the role of tradition and myth, and indigenous knowledge, and explore customary land use and long-established conservation strategies, critically important for successful conservation.

We send big thank you’s to our friends at StoryCorps for their guidance helping Pat write the grant and for their advice going forward.

@insidenatgeo @storycorps

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