Educational Outreach Program
Jungle Friends offers an outreach program to educate both children and adults about primates and local and global conservation issues. The program’s science-based presentations are age-graded and can be tailored to address any specific content needs of the institutions requesting our program. 
The institutions we have served include k-12 schools, University of Florida’s pre-vet club, Santa Fe Community College Teaching Zoo, retirement centers, children’s homes, and centers for physically and mentally challenged people. Over 16,000 youth and adults have benefited from Jungle Friends’ education program.
Program Goal & Objectives
Goal. To bring environmental education to a greater number of people in North and Central Florida, with special focus on schools and institutions that serve economically disadvantaged children.
Objective. To teach key facts on primates, rainforest ecology and protection, and local conservation to a minimum of 4,500 people in a 12-month period, and at least 2,000 are to be from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Children’s Program Need & Description
"In the end, we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand and we will understand only what we are taught."
-Baba Dioum,
Ministry of Agriculture, Senegal
It is more critical now than ever that our future generation grow up with a strongly developed conservation and compassion ethic. Through our interactive, science-based presentation, students are encouraged to be better caretakers of the earth and all its inhabitants, and learn what simple actions they can take to protect the world in which we all live.
We begin by “virtually” introducing our young audience to the monkeys at Jungle Friends and to their natural habitats in Central and South America. We take advantage of their fascination with monkeys to highlight the importance of habitat protection and natural resource conservation at both the global and local level. Our education staff uses a combination of a Power Point presentation with audio-visual displays, a question & answer speaking style, and classroom skits to maximally involve the students in the presentation and teach them about the following content areas:
- The ecology and physical and behavioral adaptations of New World monkeys
- The symbiotic relationship they have with the rainforest
- The plight of primates and other wild animals in captivity
- The destruction of their natural habitats
- Endangered species
- The value of the rainforest globally
- The importance of local and global conservation
- Practical solutions for both local and rainforest conservation that can be implemented in our daily lives
- To understand that wild or exotic animals were not meant to be kept as ‘pets’, but rather to keep them in our hearts, not in our homes
This multi-media presentation is particularly needed for our younger audience, who maintain shorter attention spans. The new presentation format creates a more dynamic event that engages more of a child’s senses and makes a more memorable experience; all of which facilitate learning and retention of the material.
Jungle Friends asks you to kindly consider a grant / donation of $3,700 so that we may purchase the equipment needed for our improved environmental educational program. Presently, we are using equipment that has been temporarily loaned to us because we cannot afford to purchase it ourselves. Unfortunately, the owner of this equipment will soon be moving away and taking the equipment with him. The equipment funds will enable us to continue offering our educational presentations and expand our outreach program.
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