On August 2nd, seven Pride Campaign Managers successfully graduated from Rare’s first Pride cohort in China at Southwest Forestry University in Kunming. Over the past two years, all of the seven Pride campaign managers have been inspiring innovations in hundreds of Chinese communities to address daunting threats of deforestation, overgrazing, and poaching in China’s Inner Mongolia and Yunnan, Gansu ,and Jilin provinces.
Rare hosted a reception in Kunming on August 2nd to highlight the bright spots that the first China Pride cohort has achieved. The leaders of local Pride partners, international partners such as TNC and WCS, candidates from the upcoming China Pride Campaign cohort, media outlets, Yunnan Forestry Department, and grassroots NGOs attended the event. Seven Campaign Managers were invited as panelist to showcase their best practices during their campaigns.
The event started with a video documentary of the Hunchun Pride Campaign to protect the last remaining Siberian tigers. The Campaign Manager Jianmin Lang told a story of an old hunter who was attacked by a tiger when he was poaching many years ago. During the Pride campaign in Hunchun, the hunter realized the urgency to stop setting snares and join the patrolling team protecting tigers.
Li Xiaohong from the Yuhe Campaign to protect the Golden Monkey, who is also a professor at a local university, shared his experience about being a movie director for the first time in his life. Because the campaign survey showed the community residents liked to watch movies, Xiaohong decided to make a short movie about a story of a college student who helped his family adopt efficient stoves.
“I had never thought I could make a movie,” he said. “Now even my son wants to play a role in my movie!” Professor Li was very proud that his movie not only attracted huge crowds in the communities, but that it also helped him raise funding to build more stoves when he played the movie at a local university.
Meng Gen from Alxa in Inner Mongolia showed a special “darling bag” made by all her family members for her Pride Campaign to protect local forests. The bag is commonly seen on the motorcycle at her site, but her special “darling bags” are passing the love of nature from one family to another. “I feel myself, my family, and the community residents are tied closer through the Pride Campaign,” she said.
Zhuoma Sina from the Baima Snow Mountain campaign to protect the Golden Monkey caught everyone’s eyes with her 50-meter-long drawing cloth, which was done by the school children at her site. Through her Pride Campaign, not only did the children learn more about protecting the Yunnan Golden Monkey, but they also drew their passion for conservation on a piece of cloth. Their parents and even their teachers couldn’t believe these amazing drawings was done by children.
Honglian Duan from the Gaoligong Mountain campaign to protect the White-eyebrows gibbon shared her experience of how a cooking contest generated huge interest in her community, it inspired women to adopt electronic cooking stoves, and it reduce fuelwood usage.
“We were very surprised to find during the survey that more than 60 percent of the community residents, including those who didn’t attend the contest, were able to tell lots of details of the contest,” Honglian said. “This means the community was really excited about this event, because they have never seen such an interesting event in their community.”
Dao Meibiao from Dashanbao Nature Reserve summarized “three Pride” as the result of his campaign — pride of himself, pride of the community, and pride of the Black-necked crane. During his Pride campaign to protect the winter habitat of the Black-necked crane, he hosted a “Crane Festival” to welcome the black necked crane arriving at his site in November 2009.
The whole community went wild when a two-meter tall crane costume showed up at the festival. “An old woman went up to touch the costume and told me, ‘I have lived here for so many years and seen Black-necked crane every year, but I never got the chance to touch the Black-necked crane. Now I know how it felt!’”
At last, Huang Gang from TNC passed around a Tibetan house model to the audience, and explained how this model helped his community members to understand the concept of green building. Four demonstration houses were completed within one year, despite the road construction and bad weather. An additional three more houses were built by other villagers who voluntarily adapted the techniques of green house building. His campaign protected the coniferous forest on Meili Snow Mountain by training local carpenters and community members in green building techniques in order to reduce unsustainable logging.
All these bright spots are the result of the hard work and great team support of the Pride partners. As many campaign managers said, “Pride Campaign is a life changing experience, and will shape the path of the rest of my life.”
Below are some more photos from the festivities:
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