Meeting primate conservation organisations
Today we used our day in our week of development before the arrival of our volunteers, to get to know some other primate conservation organisations in the area. These included Ngamba Island Chimpanzee sanctuary and The Great Primate Handshake.
Ngamba Island, based in Entebbe are a sanctuary to the home of just over 
40 chimpanzees, all whom have been rescued and reintegrated into the group on the Island. Part of what we are planning with Ngamba, is to run some educational activities with them and the children from Raising up hope orphanage. We invited Patrick from Raising up hope to join us on the island to meet with Silver, Stany and Byron, who are some of the education managers and primate keepers.
We are now excited about trying to make some plans for our 
education therapy activities about chimpanzees and are currently looking at various ideas to benefit the children from the slums and orphanage, allowing them to relate their trauma and behaviours to that of the chimpanzees, and participating in creative, expressive primate education activities.We are very excited about this and the work we will be doing in the next few weeks.
While on the Island we met up with an organisation called ‘The Great Primate Handshake’ who raise awareness for primate conservation through the use of digital media. The Great Primate Handshake were visiting the island with their group of volunteers who were there with their cameras, making films and doing interviews.
Speaking to some of the volunteers, they appear very passionate about the work that they are doing and are putting together some great educational content. We have also worked with the Handshake in the UK, where they have helped us run our primate days for children at children’s hospice siblings days. In 2008 we were lucky enough to meet them in South Africa where they helped us to make a video about some of our aims with our projects at Letaba special needs school. The Great Primate Handshake are a fantastic organisation, and we feel very lucky to have been able to work with them. You can find out more about their work here…
So we look forward to the next few days where we will be working out our programmes for the children and sanctuaries for the next few weeks ahead, and the long term sustainable development of the projects within the community of the local people and culture in Uganda.
By Roger Mallins, July 6, 2010 @ 1:48 pm
Wishing you all the best with Primate Handshake Volunteers.Two heads are better than one.
By Lindsey and John, July 6, 2010 @ 6:00 pm
Hope things continue to go well; we’re glad your article is going to be in the Entebbe paper! Good luck with everything- we’ll be following developments!