Dubai: The Jane Goodall Institute has enlisted a noted international documentary filmmaker to help students apply classroom learning to practical solutions that help conserve the environment.
As part of the institute’s Roots and Shoots programme, it has named documentary filmmaker Celine Cousteau as its first ambassador to serve as a role model for environmental stewardship.
Granddaughter of the late French underwater explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau — co-inventor of the underwater aqua lung — Celine is speaking with students at a dozen UAE schools now working with the Root and Shoots programme to share her travels around the globe filming a world on the ecological precipice.
Cousteau is set to release her new documentary, ‘Tribes on the Edge’, in 2016, a three-year labour of love to visually chronicle the trials and tribulations of five remote tribes comprising about 4,000 people living in Vale de Javari in the wilds of the Amazon jungle.
Encouraging students is a worthwhile cause with long-term benefits to the environment, Cousteau said.
“The idea is to get them to understand the role of formal learning and the practical application of it,” Cousteau told Gulf News in an interview, noting the ultimate goal is to encourage “students eventually becoming ambassadors themselves.”
Ideally, students may find that a love for the environment could lead to a life lived and connected professionally in some way to the preserving the planet.
Cousteau said at the age of 9 she was inspired by her grandfather when she first visited the Amazon region aboard his research vessel Calypso and years later returned to document the people and landscape of the area.
“There is an inherent want for reward for what we do,” said Cousteau. “Working with youth in Roots and Shoots, we are teaching students that there is a practical application for the knowledge they are learning. This education does have real-world examples.”
Tara Golshan, Executive Director of Education at the Jane Goodall Institute, pointed out that more than 150,000 people in 135 countries are now involved in Roots and Shoots activities to help conservation.
The institute, she said, was honoured to have Cousteau lend her experience and name to the Roots and Shoots leadership programme in the UAE.
Cousteau’s dedication mirrors that of Goodall, Golshan said.
Fifty-five years ago, Dr. Jane Goodall travelled to Gombe Stream National Park and conducted years of pioneering research with wild chimpanzees.
Awareness
- Founded by renowned primatologist Jane Goodall, the Jane Goodall Institute is a global organisation that empowers people to make a difference for all living things.
- Goodall’s Roots & Shoots groups work in hundreds of schools inspiring young people to take action for people, animals and the environment and works to raise awareness of the need for conservation, community development and about chimpanzees in Africa.
- For more details, log on to www.janegoodall.org or www.rootsandshoots.org
