Happy World Giraffe Day and World Giraffe Week! Children and community members in the Tarangire region of Tanzania celebrate their national animal at a Giraffe Fun Day at Esilialei Primary School. Thank you as always to our funders for helping to make this celebration happen!

James brings Wild Nature Institute's Africa's Giants children's storybooks to the Seronera Primary School in the heart of Serengeti National Park.

Kudos to Wild Nature Institute's Education Coordinator James Madeli, who has been doing a great job integrating our 'Celebrating Africa's Giants' education program into the curriculum of primary and secondary schools in the Tarangire-Manyara region.

Our books and posters and hands-on activities make it fun to learn about giraffes, elephants, and rhinos - which is particularly important in the schools surrounding Tarangire and Lake Manyara National Parks where these animals live. The activities use the charismatic mega-herbivores to teach broader subjects as well, like mathematics, ecology, and language.

Our hope is these kids will become Tanzanian giraffe, elephant, and rhino heroes in their communities, and help protect these magnificent animals and the habitats they need to survive.

The wonderful students from Charles H. Hulse Public School in Ottowa, Canada are giraffe heroes. They heard about the silent extinction of giraffes by watching “The Woman Who Loves Giraffes,” a movie about one of the first giraffe scientists, the eminent Dr. Anne Innes Dagg. They decided they wanted to help, so they organized a rummage sale and raised funds to “adopt” a baby giraffe from Wild Nature Institute! A hundred percent of their donation goes to our conservation research and education program to save giraffes in Tanzania, and in return they received an adoption certificate, a photograph, and a letter from their adopted baby giraffe, named Baraka, as well as a Juma the Giraffe storybook. The name Baraka means “Blessing” in Swahili, and many of the students in the school speak Swahili and Arabic and thus understand the meaning of the name.

People often ask us what they can do to help save giraffes. Donating money and raising awareness are some of the most important actions you can take – which makes the students from Charles H. Hulse Public School true giraffe heroes. Thank you for standing tall for giraffes!

#StandTallForGiraffes

Tanzanian schoolchildren living near elephants in the Tarangire-Manyara region are learning about the similarities between elephants and people, and the importance of empathy, through Wild Nature Institute's latest storybook Our Elephant Neighbours.

In addition to the ivory poaching crisis, elephants are often killed due to conflicts with farmers. The story explains why elephants raid crop fields, and provides solutions such as chili pepper fences and land planning to keep space for elephants to move.

Our Elephant Neighbours is the second in our series of books about Africa's Giants giraffes, elephants, and rhinos. These books teach about wildlife ecology, social behavior, and conservation through captivating images and engaging stories, and inspire the next generation to protect these magnificent megaherbivores for the health of their environment and economy.

#AfricasGiants  #StandTallForGiraffe  #ElephantNeighbors  #RhinoCrash

The Wildlife Warrior Clubs in Kenya are using our new African Rhinos: Conservation Crash! poster to teach kids about rhino ecology and conservation, thanks to our partners at Land & Life Foundation. We are excited that our education program is spreading to other countries in east Africa!   #ConservationCrash   #AfricasGiants

Wild Nature Institute makes our posters and activity guides free to download and print, and our storybooks can be viewed in English and Swahili as videobooks. Our goal is for children in Africa, the USA, and around the world to be inspired by charismatic mega-herbivores rhinos, giraffe, and elephants, and to love and protect wild nature wherever they live.

Thank you to our Celebrating Africa's Giants partners PAMS Foundation, our funders at USAID, The Living Desert, Sac Zoo, Columbus Zoo and Aquarium, Tulsa Zoo, Tierpark Berlin, and the Pollinator Project, and our design and production team, for helping us make these beautiful educational materials and get them into the hands and hearts of children around the world.

The Wild Nature Institute and PAMS Foundation celebrated International Day of Forests on 21 March by planting native tree seedlings at Lowassa Secondary School in Makuyuni. On this very special day, 76 students and 2 teachers from the Malihai Club (an after-school program focused on wildlife and the environment) first discussed the importance of forests and trees. Then students learned how to properly plant and care for a tree and planted 62 seedlings around the campus.

We are thrilled that children in Tanzania participated in the day, whose theme was "Forests and Education."

At the end of the day, we donated soccer balls so additional fun could be had.
This school is located in giraffe habitat in the Tarangire-Manyara region, so this activity will benefit both people and giraffes! We plan to do more tree restoration projects and inspire children to care for their forests, for giraffes, elephants, birds, people, and the planet!

We are excited to share our newest addition to the Celebrating Africa's Giants education package - rhinoceros-themed activities to accompany our children's storybook, Helping Brother Rhinoceros, and our large-sized poster African Rhinos: Conservation Crash!

"Helping Out" meets Next Generation Science Standards as children Pre-K through 6th grade learn about wildlife conservation and inter-dependency of plants and animals using hands-on, creative and fun activities. The activities were developed by Lise Levy, science teacher extraordinaire and Wild Nature Institute's education consultant - thank you Lise! Lise trains Tanzanian teachers in hands-on teaching for deeper learning, and oversees distribution of Swahili versions of our books and posters to Tanzanian classrooms, together with our Tanzanian education coordinator James Madeli.

Click on the image below to download the full PDF of "Helping Out," or visit our Rhinoceros page on this website.

The Conservation Crash! poster is available for free download on this website (click on Rhinoceros tab). Helping Brother Rhinoceros is  available for purchase by contacting Monica_at_wildnatureinstitute.org.

In addition to our three amazing kids story books; the cool posters for Giraffe, Elephant and Rhino; and the educator's resources full of science and art activities, we are also producing a fantastic magazine called Nature's Giants that is full of neat stories about scientists, Africa's Giants, and more! Doug Beetle is your guide to the games, comics, and activities in this fun and beautiful magazine.