Community Engagement...
FCTV works with communities to empower them to resolve local environmental and social development issues, by developing awareness, understanding and management skills. We recognise that engaging local communities as active stakeholders in developing solutions to development and conservation challenges is essential if such solutions are to be effective, long-lasting, and accepted by the communities themselves.
Our work in the Dja Biosphere Reserve is premised on the fact that unless the people who live around protected areas see a value, to them, in conservation, they will not support it. Currently they bear all the burden of living near a reserve, in the constraints put on their traditional livelihood activities, and derive none of the benefits.
Click on the project links below to find out more about Community Engagement as an integral part of all of FCTV's work.
Voice of the People, a music album produced in 2009 by Cameroonian artist Vicky Brown, aims to raise awareness about the challenges facing forest dwelling communities living in and around protected areas. The songs on the album give a voice to the marginalised inhabitants of the Dja Biosphere Reserve.
This project, which is ongoing, aims to implement a great ape conservation education programme around the Dja Biopshere Reserve and to identify ways that local communities are able to collaborate with law enforcement and conservation agents within the region, so that an accepted, practical ‘early warning system’ that utilises local knowledge may be implemented.
This project, which ran between 2006 and 2008, helped local communities, living around the Dja Biosphere Reserve, to better engage with government and conservation agencies in order to encourage their active participation in conservation efforts.
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