THE RED-SHANKED DOUC LANGUR TOOK PART IN THE LANGUAGE EXCHANGE FESTIVAL

10 000 pupils in Danang had a chance to study the red-shanked douc langur of Son Tra peninsula in the first language exchange festival held by Danang Department of Education and Training in January 2017.

In response to celebrate 20 years since Da Nang’s recognition as a centrally-governed city and APEC 2017, the Department of Education and Training in Danang held a 2 day language exchange festival for the first time at Phan Chau Trinh High school. The festival attracted around 10 000 students from primary schools, secondary schools, high schools, and more than 20 foreign language education centers in the city.

Also on this occasion, the Department of Education and Training of the city cooperated with Greenviet to hold a communication program to introduce the Red-shanked douc langur (which is considered as the icon of biodiversity of Danang). The program’s activities included (1) conducting an exhibition of 30 photos about the douc together with information boards, posters, bookmarks related to this species; (2) organizing an exchange show with the festival’s participants about the biodiversity of Son Tra. This is an activity of the project “Building up capacity for Greenviet in designing and implementing biodiversity projects in Danang”, funded by IUCN/CEPF in the years 2016-2017.

Among the festival’s participants, there were more than 40% of students and teachers from schools in Hai Chau and Tho Quang Districts knew about the animal through communication and educational programs held by GreenViet and the Department of Natural Resources and Environment. In other districts, nearly 90% of students and teachers did not know the animal, even mistook it with a monkey species in Son Tra.

Students studied interestingly about the similarities and differences between monkey species and douc species through stories of their social behaviors and lifestyles. Also, they were provided with more information through bookmarks and information boards in the exhibition.

Particularly, almost 10% of students and teachers got to know the red-shanked douc langur through media such as TV, newspapers, Facebook page and other sources such as from the information boards located at some bus stops in the city, from education programs at the City Library.