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The indigenous people of the Congo Basin have been sharing the forest with great apes for thousands of year, yet most know very little about them, nor have they actually seen one. INCEF is working with local media specialists and scientists to produce and disseminate videos that will correct this while raising awareness of the current threats to gorillas and chimpanzees.

The bushmeat trade (hunting and commercial sale of wildlife for human consumption) is taking a toll on the great ape populations in the Congo Basin and is bringing humans and remote populations of wildlife into closer and closer contact, creating a significant increase in disease transmission within and between human and wildlife populations. The risk to humans who hunt and consume the meat of infected animals is enormous. The Great Ape Public Awareness Project promotes prevention of disease transmission and offers insight into the ecology and behavior of great apes: long-overdue education for people living with gorillas and chimpanzees.

During and after the 2003 Ebola outbreak in the Republic of Congo, several media organizations put together news pieces and film projects about the virus, its threat on both the gorilla and human population, and what the implications were for biodiversity and global health. None of these reports and films were shown locally or translated into the local language.

New conservation strategies are needed to integrate issues of biodiversity with public health outreach. INCEF combines these issues with the power of moving images and sound, providing locally-produced videos geared featuring local people speaking in their own words.

INCEF Education Teams have brought villagers throughout the northern regions of the Republic of Congo, face to face with gorillas and chimpanzees – usually for the first time through video-centered education outreach.

Though the regions of Cuvette Central, Cuvette Ouest, Sangha and Likouala have one of the highest great ape populations on the African Continent, and though the human populations of this region have been sharing their habitat with these species for thousands of years, most people know very little about gorillas and chimpanzees. And as INCEF’s surveys have shown, most of the population has never even seen a great ape.

INCEF’s approach begins by introducing audiences to Chimpanzees and Gorillas.

Gorillas and Chimpanzees: Both films are made up of footage donated to INCEF by scientists working in the region and are edited to local music showing audiences that they are intelligent social animals, what they look like and how much they resemble humans.

Great Apes: So Like Us: Examines our relationship to the Great Apes, what the threats are and explains in-depth their social behavior, how they help secure the integrity of the forest, and why it is important to preserve them.

Audiences are even less educated, by and large in the risks of diseases that are transmitted between animals and humans, specifically Ebola.

Ebola – Testimony –contains interviews of people whose lives have been touched directly by Ebola epidemics in the Cuvette Ouest Region of the Republic of Congo. They tell their stories, and also discuss prevention, transmission and the social repercussion of the disease as well as explanations refuting the concept that Ebola is being caused by sorcery or black magic.

Ebola – Understanding –handles the subject of Ebola from a more scientific viewpoint focusing on causes, preventions, and transmission as well as giving a scientific explanation of what causes Ebola.

All films are produced by local media professionals who learn to focus clear and culturally appropriate messages. All films are voiced over in local languages. And INCEF trains education outreach teams to use battery operated projection systems and to use a standardized methodology which offers pre and post screening survey questions and participatory discussion of the films.

From June of 2007 through August of 2008 – films have been disseminated to over 90,000 individuals by four educators traveling more than 2500 kilometers, mostly on foot.

Download 2008 Republic of Congo Performance Report: Great Apes and Ebola