P-WAC at the Hospital

Amandine Renaud and the children in the hospital.

Monday June 1st, we debuted our first educational presentations for hospitals. Amandine, our founder, spent her day with hospitalized children and their medical team in order to make them aware of the cause of the great apes. Here is the testimony of the hospitalize children and medical staff of Neuro Hospital (Lyon).

« Thank you to Amandine for providing her time to us. We learned the differences and similarities between man and the great apes (in the end, we are so like one another!), learned that there’s a lot of poaching and corruption in the affected countries in Africa, and were informed about the huge amounts of deforestation in certain countries. Deforestation puts a lot of wild animals in danger, including our friends the chimpanzees! We were told that in order to “reforest” these areas, they planted trees that were subsequently sold for their palm oil !! and we were made aware we should avoid eating baked goods made with palm oil (including some organic cookies) and Nutella and to avoid buying furniture made with tropical wood ».

Some strong words from the children:

« Man doesn’t respect the environment enough »

« By protecting apes, we protect ourselves »

« If we were in cages, we wouldn’t like to be photographed all day »

« The children and teens were very, very interested, captivated for 2 hours, they didn’t notice the passage of time and at the hospital, that’s very important ! There were a lot of exchanges, thoughts, questions and pertinent remarks by the children. Thanks with all our heart to Amandine for this wonderful morning spent with us and for letting us share her passion and her caring for our far away cousins » Catherine, Teacher in service.

We took advantage of this opportunity to distribute our first educational leaflets !! Briefly, our team has put together an educational booklet for children. This teaching tool reprises important facts about primatology, and includes games and quizzes. Elisa, a P-WAC volunteer, regularly completes “design missions” for us. She helped design this entertaining tool.

Elisa

“Like many, I learned about P-WAC through the Shaka Ponk website when the group become their patron. Concerned about animal and ecological causes, I naturally went to take a look at the P-WAC website. I immediately admired the battle that Amandine and the members of P-WAC are engaged in, especially for protection of the great apes. So I contacted her to volunteer to provide graphic design help to try to add my little bit of brick to the building.

It was Amandine who told me about the game booklet. With her crack team, they had put together a mix of games and quizzes that she hoped to offer to hospitalized children in the form a of four page booklet, in order to make them aware of the fragility of our environment. As an illustrator and graphic designer, I simply tried to bring her text to life in an entertaining way in order to simplify the message. And I think they responded really well to this approach!”

A big thank you to Elisa for her help. Our new educational tool was very well received. Her new contribuiton to P-WAC will be brought to light soon. While you wait, you can see her work on her website or on her Facebook page.

Thanks to the entire team of United 500 at Neuro Hospital in Lyon for their warm welcome: Catherine, Justine (teaching assistant), and Audrey without whom this presentation would not have happened ! Thanks to all the children who participated : Andréa (16), Boris (15, future veterinarian!!), Kareem (17), Baptiste (13) and the youngest, Amber (10).