Nature Seychelles will co-organise a bird festival for all wildlife clubs, hosted by clubs in the Northern region of the country for all other regions. Beginning the 5th of May at school level, clubs are being sensitised on the issue during their club meetings and will organise exhibitions, visits to nearby shores and other school-based activities. At national level however we will be organising this bird festival on the Saturday 24th of May since the 10th (the official WMBD) would be the time of high tides in Seychelles, what makes it difficult to watch some migratory birds. Also the school term has just started so the club leaders advised us that it will be difficult at this moment to mobilise members to attend and a third constraint is financial support, so we have more time to raise some money and maybe transport to drive into town on the day. Unfortunately, clubs from the other island will not be able to join us as we do not have the funds to transport them all the way to the main island for the event.
The festival itself will see the participation of most of the 800+ members of the WCS, Nature Seychelles staff and other partners like the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Environment and the national media.
There will be short speeches for official launching by NS CEO/ WCS Chairperson and by members. Activities will comprise general information and exhibitions on birds, their importance, threats, the 2008 theme and children workshops; story telling, poems, songs and wildlife music, puppet shows, creative arts, building and colouring a bird, face paintings, bird feeding, bird games and others - all around migratory birds and their protection.
We will also have presentations from the workshops.
National media will be informed to cover the event.
The WC of Seychelles tend to make this event on a large scale every two years. We did it in 2006 when we received some financial support from the African office. In 2007 we only held activities at regional level and it was still quite successful. This year again we are hosting a large scale event but we are asking clubs to try and fund raise to ensure the success of the event.
We will report on the event with pictures when we have done it.