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Students standing with bags of rubbish collected next to orangutan mascot.

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Pongo Goes to School

A fun and educational workshop for young children in a rural school, helping to inspire conservation and environmental awareness.

18/01/2024

School visit

Our team in Sabah have continued to deliver our education and community outreach programme; creating a greater awareness of orangutans, instilling a sense of responsibility for the environment and contributing towards sustainable practices.

Students holding up handmade orangutan masks made from rubbish collected.
Students creating orangutan masks made from rubbish.
Sekolah Kebangsaan Kota Kinabatangan school students

We were honoured to have been invited to take part in ‘Pongo Goes to School’, an educational programme initiated and organised by Kinabatangan Wildlife Officer, Sylvia Alsisto. We joined Sylvia and her team, along with 35 pupils and their teachers, at Sekolah Kebangsaan Kota Kinabatangan, where the children and their families had been collecting waste materials to take part in a fun mask-making activity.

Orangutan mascot standing with bin bags full of rubbish.

The school has established a ‘Nature Club’ to help the children learn more about the wildlife they live alongside, but further education is incredibly helpful.

Sylvia created the character called ‘Pongo’, who is a cartoon representation of an orangutan, which the children loved! Pongo was brought to life in the form of one of her team dressed in a full-sized orangutan costume. He interacted with the children, helping to show them that there’s no need to fear orangutans, as well as creating a really memorable learning experience for them.

Jacha taught the children how to make masks utilising the waste the children had collected, such as plastic water bottles, cardboard, aluminium cans, and paper. Not only did the children learn more about orangutans but it helped to inform them about the effect of littering and plastic pollution and how this negatively impacts wildlife and their local environment, which is something that is never normally discussed.

Following the success of this visit and such positive feedback from the headteacher, Sylvia is now hoping to roll out this programme to other rural schools and we are very pleased to offer our assistance to her for this initiative.

School children holding up orangutan masks they made out of carboard

The team have also been visiting villages, taking a variety of educational tools and materials to share their invaluable knowledge about orangutan conservation. Many people in Sabah are unaware of the threats to orangutan populations. They can sometimes perceive their presence as a threat, where they could destroy crops and jeopardise their livelihoods.

Providing information on the best ways to manage these situations should hopefully result in less human-orangutan conflict and a more harmonious relationship between this critically endangered species and those sharing their habitat.

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