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IFCAE Project: Congo Basin Aka Education |
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| Timeframe: | 2007-2010 |
| Investigators: | Barry Hewlett, Bonnie Hewlett, Casey Roulette |
| Administration: | Institute for Culture and Ecology |
| Funding: | Private Donors. Additional private donations and grant funding is being pursued. |
| Project Overview | |
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The Aka are
hunters and gatherers that live in the tropical forests of the Congo
Basin. Aka foragers’ way of life and their knowledge about the
tropical forest are threatened from encroaching development projects
(e.g., logging for tropical forest hardwoods, gold mining).
Approximately half of the Aka children die before reaching age
fifteen.
The Aka
in the area of this project do not attend the public schools because
they are discriminated against by the more dominant farming people
in the area.
Aka are
often perceived as animals and natural thieves by farmers.
Consequently Aka do not know how to read, write or count money as
people all around them exploit
the
natural resources in their subsistence areas.
At the request of the Aka this project has been developed to improve
the capacity of a small school that has been established in the
area. This includes providing basic supplies, school teachers,
to develop curriculum that builds on the extensive Aka knowledge of
the forest ecosystem, and to create applied educational
opportunities such as participatory mapping of traditional Aka
homelands. This project will help
enable current
and future generations of Aka to speak and act for themselves at the
local, national and international levels. |
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