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Have you ever heard of the legend of Mokele Mbembe. Mokele Mbembe is thought to be a dinosaur living in a lake, Lac Tele, in the Likouala region in the northern part of the Republic of Congo. Lac Tele is the region of Congo where I have worked for over six years as a deputy manager and communications expert for the Wildlife Conservation Society – Congo.

Since 10 May 2001, Lac Tele and the swamp forests around it have been merged into a protected area: Lac Tele Community Reserve.  WCS runs the Reserve in partnership with the Congolese government. Besides my work for WCS in the Lac Tele project, I serve as INCEF’s focal point within Northern Congo.

INCEF‘s program is the production of videos for educational purposes and dissemination of them in remote villages. I’ve been working for over six months in Lac Tele as INCEF’s boots-on-the-ground education outreach specialist to exhibit the videos, lead discussions and collect information from the audiences for evaluation of the program’s effectiveness.

INCEF invited me to come to Washington in April/May 2007 to discuss the preliminary outcomes of our video outreach work in Congo. One meeting was organized by the African Biodiversity Collaborative Group (ABCG) at the headquarters of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). Another one took place at the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI) and included representatives of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS).

I also had the opportunity to attend a meeting on community-based natural resources management and one to review proposed cuts in the budget of the Agency for International Development (USAID) where we also saw a preview of a film on the forests of Gabon.

My talks at WWF and JGI included the following points: (1) Introduction to Lac Tele Community Reserve, (2) Video Outreach Objectives, (3) Materials used, (4) Methodology and (5) Feedback and Future Plans.  

1. Introduction to Lac Tele Community Reserve
Surface    4440 km2
Principal habitats    Swamp forests, seasonally inundated swamp forests, terra firma forests, savanna
Key species    Western lowland gorillas, common chimpanzees,
Main threat    Unsustainable commercial hunting
Human population    14,000
Villages    27

2. Video Outreach Objectives
Fostering new perception of wildlife among communities
Enhancing localism and community-mindedness in dealing with conservation and health issues
Providing a new communications tool for community use

3. Materials used
A very light set of materials is used. This includes: a projector, a screen, two car batteries, a generator, a DVD player and speakers.

4. Methodology
Assessment of education projects can be difficult in general. In our particular case the difficulty of getting the best information for evaluation is compounded by the fact that the film exhibitions have created huge excitement within the villages. We ended up dividing these village communities into four focus groups: children, young adults, women and old people.

Pre-screening and post-screening interviews provide in-depth data for future evaluation. This technique also helps to get an immediate sense of the impact of the films.

It’s premature to say how effective the video outreach program is while scientific analysis of the data is pending. However, from the anecdotal stories that we’ve heard from rural people, we have reason to believe that this education project makes a huge impression – and a difference – in the behavior of the residents of the reserve’s villages.

5. Feedback and future plans
These quotes come from stories that were offered after the films were shown in the villages.
A village chief told us: “Tell chimps and gorillas to come and live with us. We understand that they are humans. I’m a landlord and I’m going to provide them with a significant stretch of land.”
A woman told us: “If my husband brings a dead chimp or a gorilla for me to cook, we’ll quarrel.”
A young adult told us: “What a shame! We are no better than cannibals.”
A hunter told us: “Yes, chimps have a social life. I’ve seen them playing in a circle passing around a turtle they caught like a ball!”

The INCEF video outreach project is a unique effort to reach out to rural communities because of the local emphasis. Future evaluation will be done by a group from the University of California at Berkeley and by an American expert coming to Congo as a Fulbright scholar.

Conclusion
My unforgettable first trip to Washington allowed me to meet a wide range of people and to make invaluable contacts from field-based conservation experts and managers to donors and staff from the U.S. government. This promises to help both the INCEF video outreach effort and the Lac Tele program gain more experience, more professionalism and more visibility.