Next Ambassadors of Tarsiers in Bilar

After demanding monitoring of our new female tarsier, Nina, staff of our Project could not wait to come back to schools, to educate new young Ambassadors of Tarsiers. Thanks to fruitful collaboration with local Principals, we had a chance to visit four schools between 10^th and 14^th August. Going further than our previous activities in neighbouring schools, we went to very remote areas, where the need for raising awareness among youngest is even higher due to closeness of the forest.

This time we targeted again the youngest pupils, between 1^st and 3^rd grades, thus implementing our curriculum with theatrical performance in Visayan for better understanding. Filip again become the Tarsier for one week and the role of the Hunter was taken by our field assistant, Raniel. Through our experience gained by educational visits last time, we improved organization of entire performance and knowing already the level of the pupils, we adjusted the quiz accordingly. This time we had invaluable help from Raniel, who instead of English was able to communicate with kids in Tagalog, ensuring that all of the information were understandable to our participants. From time to time answers of the pupils surprised us, sometimes providing very clear and correct statement for their age, giving us a hope for future survival of the tarsiers in Bohol. Also our new narrators: Armand, Cristina and Joerbert took their roles seriously and interacted with children to the highest degree possible, making a cozy atmosphere with learning through fun. On the other hand, pupils again amazed us with their drawings, when we could see tarsiers in all of the colours possible as well as their prey and suitable habitat which children had just learnt during our visit. At the end, after all of the drawings were combined to create the ecosystem, where tarsiers live, the mandatory part of our visit was conducted as well: all of our participants received the certificates reminding them that from now on they are the Ambassadors of Tarsiers.

During this exhausting but rewarding week we visited Villa Aurora, Rizal and Riverside Primary Schools as well as Villa Swerte Elementary School, with total of 147 pupils participating in our programme. We are grateful to very welcoming teachers who helped us to conduct all the visits smoothly. It was also nice to see that our Projects is becoming more recognizable as we were asked to come back with the programme for older pupils… Which we will obviously do soon!

Text: Filip Wojciechowski

Photos: Raniel Ponteras, Sherry Ott Clark