Check out the unbelievable work of the school nature clubs around Volcanoes National Park—these children and their teachers are true community heroes.

Through our Conservation Education Program, we support nature club projects in 15 primary schools located near the park. Each year we work with the clubs to develop projects that will help both the environment and their local communities. Last year’s projects focused on planting nurseries to produce fruits, seeds, bamboo and trees that could then be distributed within communities near the schools. Unfortunately, with schools closed due to COVID-19, the students have been unable to harvest, but we continue to work with the nature clubs to monitor the trees. This week, our team was finally able to visit, and we were thrilled to see how successful the planting project has been.

Maurice Ngiramahoro, our conservation education manager, says “we are very happy—so far, we have distributed more than 20,000 trees produced by the Nature Clubs. This year, we should be able to add 15,570 more to that total.”

This is successful initiative is teaching kids and benefitting many others in the community, which is especially valuable this year as they face difficulties brought on by COVID. A conservation win-win!