Breakfast Male Lemur
Research Scientists at Berenty
HOMEPAGE of the Berenty Website The Berenty Reserve Tourism Website The Ako Project


Click here for Ako Phase 2, Project Completion Report
by Hanta Rasamimanana ENS (Ecole Normale Supérieure),
University of Antananarivo

The Ako Project

Ako Project Plate Seminar ppt Slide and School Children

The Ako Project, conceived in 2006, is the creation of six illustrated storybooks on the adventures of young lemurs of six different species in Madagascar. Each book has goes with a poster on the very different habitats of the six lemurs. The Project involves and aids primary school teachers in Madagascar through the École Normale Supérieure. Its focus is in Madagascar but with educational outreach in England and the USA... Read more about the Ako Project by visiting the Ako Project Website, hosted by the Lemur Conservation Foundation (LCF) .

 

View a classroom reading of Ny AiAy Ako in a Madagascar school (video file download):

Window Media Audio/video file (45 scs; 4.4 MB) - Download

The AKO series books aim to educate people in conservation and sustainable development. To achieve such education we used one method called "Art and Science for conservation". Readers learn science and are aware about the richness of Madagascar biodiversity thanks to the scientific content of the books. The trainers and students learn art by expressing the content of three books with drawings, songs, and plays and making themselves the costumes and accessories for the plays. The exploited stories are BITIKA, the mouse lemur; LOINA AND MBOLO, the red ruffed lemur twins and TSIMIHIRA, the indri. By these ways the children know the content of the Ako books by heart and understand the significance of lemurs for Madagascar. Thanks to "Art and Science for Conservation" carried out all over Madagascar from west to east and all around Antananarivo region, trainers and students tend to achieve two goals of the sustainable development education. They are the 15th relating to the ecosystem preservation and restoration; and the 17th about the reinforcement of the global partnership. Briefly the overall goal of Sustainable Development Education is to train social actors to be aware about the world, to accept differences and to be able to build trough exchanges. Through "Art and Science for Conservation" method we have been training Malagasy trainers and students to take their responsibility, to work together in an inclusive way and to avoid the begging.

- Hanta Rasamimanana ENS (Ecole Normale Supérieure), University of Antananarivo

'The Use of the Ako Series'