BACKGROUND OF CHILDREN CONSERVATIONISTS PROGRAMME

Golden Trekkers Africa has joined the struggle to conserve the National Parks and Game reserves in Uganda and Rwanda by involving young people – Children Conservationists. The Children conservationists are young people aged between 8-22 years living around National parks who will play the role of change agents on conservation of National Parks. Golden Trekkers Africa is working with schools bordering the national parks to involve them in conservation. Like the African saying, ‘a tree is straightened while it is still young’, when children are groomed at an early age to love and conserve the environment, they grow up to be good ambassadors of conservation. In most cases, young people living near national parks depend on these parks to obtain basic needs for survival. This puts our parks at a risk of poaching, encroachment, deforestation, forest fires and endangering the wildlife. Therefore, Golden Trekkers Africa will find solutions to this problem through educating young people about conservation of parks and game reserves around them but also supporting the youth find alternative sources of livelihood by training them in vocational skills to reduce pressure on these resources.

History of CCP

CHILDREN CONSERVATIONISTS PROGRAMME was started by Vincent Twagira a former tourist guide with tourism and conservation training which made him to thrive in this sector. Throughout his professional work in the National Parks and game reserves, Vincent observed poor conservation practices that were threatening continued existence of wildlife and the parks at large something that forced him to think of addressing the vice.

During his work, Vincent moved to different national parks of Uganda, Rwanda and Kenya, where he met vulnerable children and youths living near the National Parks whose main livelihood were dependent on these national parks. Therefore, they needed support to ensure that they are empowered to minimize poor national parks conservation practices they practiced. Some of these children grew up in communities that were involved in poor conservation practices within and around national parks which greatly endangered wildlife through poaching, deforestation and encroachment in search for survival means. He thought that by educating these children about conservation, it would help improve their conservation consciousness, livelihood and eventually better the conservation efforts of the parks around them.

In 2014, Vincent resigned from his job in the Volcanoes National Park to start his own tour and travel company called Golden Trekkers Africa. He realized his dream of supporting children near national parks in 2018 and initiated an organisation called ‘CHILDREN CONSERVATIONISTS PROGRAMME’ (CCP) with a vision of conserving wildlife the future generation. CCP was launched in Aug 2018 in Fort Portal – Uganda.

This is achieved in a variety of ways, ranging from running conservation camps at CCP sites, to running Conservation-Clubs and Follow-up Programmes at schools, within the rural communities that live on the edges of the wild national parks and game reserves and advocating for conservation in close collaboration with other stakeholders.

National Parks and game reserves where CCP works.

• 1. Queen Elizabeth National Park- Uganda
• 2. Bwindi Impenetrable national Park-Uganda.
• 3. Akagera National Park-Rwanda.
• 4. Gishwati Forest National Park-Rwanda.