Since 2012, OELO has organized an Environmental Ed program in the primary and secondary schools of Lambaréné. We are now present in 31 schools in the Lambaréné region reaching thousands of students annually. We sponsor school year and summer break nature clubs, with hundreds of members, that lead stewardship projects in their schools and neighborhoods. We train dozens of teacher mentors annually to lead clubs and events. We hold community events including an annual world environment day, world wetlands day conference, environmental art fair and biennial world fish migration event. At these events we award environmental scholarships, prizes and places to stop club members at our annual environmental leadership camp at Tsam Tsam.
In 2017 and 2018, we reached over 6000 students with our Environmental Education (EE) curriculum on protected species and hunting laws, ecosystem services of wetlands, biodiversity and protected areas. Our team coordinates with the provincial school system and the directors of each partner school to approve curriculum and find appropriate classes for our sessions. Our lesson plans are adapted for both primary and secondary school levels.
During the second half of the school year, our team forms dozens of extra-curricular nature clubs led by teacher mentors at our partner schools. In 2017 and 2018, we had over 500 student club members leading stewardship projects including: building a waste incinerator at the public high school, leading a restaurant caravan to inform vendors and clients of protected species, leading school fairs with environmental themes, planting trees and gardens at their schools, creating local TV specials on protected species, and improving school grounds by electrifying classrooms and painting murals. The clubs from our partner schools met at multiple times over the school year to exchange ideas and lessons learned. We trained two dozen teacher mentors at partner schools who ensure the sustainability of our EE program. We led four overnight excursions to Tsam Tsam with the top club members to reward their hard work and we awarded over $10,000 in two years in environmental scholarships to the most motivated students.
During the summer breaks, our EE team worked with over a dozen neighborhood clubs leading stewardship projects around the city. Our summer clubs have over 200 members annually and are led by 15 summer interns. Stewardship projects included neighborhood and waterway clean-ups, community gardens, murals with environmental outreach messages, and outreach campaigns on protected species and waste management with their neighbors. Each summer the top neighborhood club earns a trophy for their neighborhood chief and a cash prize to create a beautification project. In 2017, students voted to create a mural in the Marré neighborhood with an outreach message to keep the roadside clean and in 2018, students voted to create two outreach panels in the Petit Paris III neighborhood on hunting seasons and to stop people from dumping trash into their local wetland. Our summer interns earn stipends and build leadership skills to become effective community organizers.
OELO finalized a partnership agreement with the city of Lambaréné in 2016 to work on joint environmental initiatives. Our first project became “La Maison de la Nature:” a youth nature center in the Adouma neighborhood where community members and nature clubs can host events. We completed renovations including a new roof, a mural of native Gabonese trees and the biodiversity they support, the installation of electricity, a large terrace overlooking a wetland and the Ogooué River and three outreach panels on emblematic species of the Bas Ogooué Ramsar Site, ecosystem services of wetlands, and the Ramsar Sites of Gabon.
