by Adama Ndiaye, Director of the primary school Cayar 1
It's been a few months since we shared experiences and developed further priority actions for protecting the oceans and the environment around us during the capitalisation workshop in April 2013. This workshop was a follow-up activity about practice and the lessons learned from our involvement in pilot activities relating to the introduction of the ecosystem approach to fisheries conducted to test an educational package developed for FAO and the EAF Nansen Project as well as to other good experiences in other contexts.
During the workshop we had prepared an action plan on how to engage effectively the school community of the primary school Cayar 1. For us, it was clear that such a project should go beyond the school to succeed and that it should involve parents, institutions and, indeed, citizens of the town.
We therefore seized the opportunity to renew our partnership services administratively responsible for fisheries activities in Cayar. The head of the departmental service promised us film screenings on the oceans, on fisheries. We have organised the work of the teaching staff and secretariat of the school's management committee. Then there will be commissions to get the work done: one each on the coastal and marine environment and on teaching. There will also be a cultural committee and a finance committee.
Each committee is composed of at least two school teachers for guardianship, six pupils for the six development steps, four parents of pupils involved in maritime fisheries and two resource persons (from the Department of Fisheries and the Marine Protected Area).
Each committee develops an action plan that will unfold for the year. It will present the results of its efforts on 31 July each year.
With the teaching aids provided by Mundus maris and FAO as support we started our work.
We could thus present our approach to the President of the Republic of Senegal, Mr. Macky Sall, who paid a visit to Cayar on January 17, 2014.
We also got some visuals from the visit of the President of the Republic to the actors of the marine and continental artisanal fisheries. The photos illustrate his particular interest in the work of the schools about introducing the ecosystem approach to fisheries into the ordinary curriculum.
So each committee is active for site visits, the use of educational materials for environmental action projects including advocacy, communication and information through deployment of theater, exhibitions, posters and remediation activities, but also the celebration of special days such as World Oceans Day on 8 June and the World Environment Day in general on 5 June.
We appreciate in passing that Mr. Aliou Sall of Mundus maris provided us with documentation support for the exhibition set up for the President's visit. The local FM Radio Cayar has reported and recognised our educational work. That motivates us to continue and to engage even more.