Environmental education

Nosy Be's first environmental education programme!

Initiated in 2013 with the organisation of the first “whale festival”, Mada Megafauna, our partner local NGO, and the Madagascar Whale shark Project, took the programme a step further in 2018 with the recruitment of its first full-time educator. Thanks to MMF (Marine Megafauna Foundation) support to replicate its local program in Mozambique, the education programme called: Les gardiens de l’Océan (Guardians of the Ocean) is now running a school programme, street activities during the school holidays and beach activities every Saturday morning, to raise awareness within the local community.
From pre-schoolers to young adults, almost 5,000 young people have benefited from these activities since 2018. Every year, many local residents of all ages are also taken out to sea to discover the exceptional marine fauna.

Today, the education project involves a full-time youth educator and a second educator in training. For 2024, the key challenges are to ensure the continuity of the school programme and to launch school projects such as waste management and tree planting. We also intend to organise more “marine life discovery” trips and initiate a project for young reporters to explore the environmental issues at stake on Nosy Be.

In parallel, we also organise; at the begin of the season, training workshops about the code of conduct amongst local tourism operators, guides and skippers working at sea. In July 2023, we trained more than a hundred sea professionals.

Every month, we give public talks about our work, to also educate passing tourists about whale sharks and what we do.