PRMP Community Outreach

Recently our project staff have continued our programme of community outreach activities by visiting local schools in and around Lahad Datu. We feel that it is important that NGOs commit to nurturing local talent and raising awareness by seeking to inspire the next generation of conservation managers and decision makers.

As such we made concerted efforts to contact local schools to see if they were interested in our education programmes on offer for a range of different age groups.

We have developed specific targeted programmes for youths aged between 6-9 years old and another slightly more advanced programme for those aged between 9-12yo. These are in addition to our existing education framework that we designed for secondary school children back in 2012. For our younger age groups we provide more playful and intuitive activities in our interactions as their attention spans are relatively short.

We use colouring competitions and wildlife photo galleries to first introduce local wildlife to them before running question and answer sessions and playing videos that they find fun and informative. We very much look forward to continuing to build our strong relationship with many of Lahad Datu’s local schools and we look forward to getting the chance to continue meeting and speaking with local kids throughout Sabah.

Expanding our local education programme to target a broader age range was one of our key objectives at the beginning of the year, and now we hope to roll out our programme further afield to include the wider catchment areas of both Kota Kinabalu and Sandakan. We are also keen to join with the Sabah Environmental Education Network (SEEN) to further expand our activities and scope.