From October 2025 to April 2026, the Cameroonian NGO Tropical Forest and Rural Development (TF-RD) carried out the second phase of the “Acting for Nature Conservation” project, implemented with the support from Youth Conservation, Play for Nature and the Fondation Audemars-Watkins. Three schools bordering the Dja Biosphere Reserve — Makak-Djeul, Somalomo and Adjane — saw the birth of teaching gardens, nurseries and eco clubs, in a report that is durably reshaping how young people relate to the forest around them.
Three schools, one shared ambition: reconnecting children with the Dja forest
Since 2010, TF-RD has worked across the Dja Biosphere Reserve landscape to reconcile biodiversity conservation with community development. Building on more than thirteen years supporting a network of 45 neighbouring schools, the NGO chose to extend this second phase to three new schools particularly exposed to pressure on natural resources, notably poaching: Makak-Djeul, Somalomo and Adjane, all located in the Haut-Nyong department in eastern Cameroon.
Makak-Djeul — A garden and ten fruit trees for a small school of 53 students
At Makak-Djeul Public School, the journey began in October 2025 with a planning meeting involving the school council, teachers and Basic Education inspectors. Three days of awareness-raising on deforestation and climate change followed in November, ahead of setting up a 10 m² nursery and then a 50 m² school garden where lettuce, cabbage, carrots and lemongrass were transplanted. Ten fruit and useful trees — mango, oil palm, lemongrass — were also planted on site.
Result: 50 students and 3 teachers reached, 12 kg harvested with part sold for 20,000 FCFA at the Somalomo inter-club fair, and a 25-student monitoring committee now responsible for daily upkeep.
Somalomo — The largest garden of the phase, driven by 302 students
At this inclusive public school founded in 1930, the same process unfolded — planning, awareness-raising, nursery, 50 m² garden — but on a larger scale: 20 fruit trees planted and a 15 kg harvest fully sold, since the school has no cafeteria, to fund a pot dedicated to buying the next round of seeds.
Result: 302 students reached, 6 teachers mobilised, 15 kg harvested and sold for 18,000 FCFA, an active monitoring committee running year-round.
Adjane — A nursery built despite a mid-year change in school leadership
At Adjane, the project had to work around a change in school leadership in December 2025, which delayed the activity timeline. Despite this setback, a 10 m² nursery was successfully set up and vegetable crops harvested in March, even though delayed ripening meant the school couldn’t showcase its produce at the inter-club fair.
Result: 48 students reached, 2 teachers mobilised, 5 kg harvested and consumed, and above all a fine demonstration of resilience: rather than withdrawing, Adjane’s eco club kept taking part in the fair’s exchanges and sports matches.
Three eco clubs, one shared momentum for Youth Week
Beyond the gardens, TF-RD trained 10 teachers on Youth Conservation’s educational resources and on running environment clubs, before setting up one eco club per school — Somalomo (40 students), Makak-Djeul (25 students) and Adjane (12 students), totalling 77 young people directly engaged. Between November 2025 and April 2026, five sessions per school explored drawings, stories and poems about conservation, teaching gardens, nurseries and reforestation, cleanliness campaigns, talks on local knowledge, and football and handball matches.
The high point of this momentum: the inter-club fair held at Somalomo Public School in February 2026, during Youth Week, which brought together 210 participants — students, teachers, local authorities, parents and community members — around exhibitions, artistic performances and four sports matches.
A tally that reaches beyond the three schools
Altogether, TF-RD’s Phase 2 raised awareness among more than 400 students and 10 teachers directly involved, and indirectly reached over 1,000 people among the communities living around the Dja Wildlife Reserve. In detail: 3 public primary schools supported, 3 teaching gardens and 3 nurseries created, 50 trees planted for reforestation, 3 awareness panels installed, 15 student productions — including a trash bin made from bamboo — and 3 monitoring missions carried out by the TF-RD team throughout the school year.
Communication around the project relied on social media (Facebook, LinkedIn), local community radio, and school councils bringing together parents and headteachers, ensuring both a digital and a community-level footprint.
A success built on learning by doing
The strength of this second phase lies in the creation of a genuine educational ecosystem: gardens, nurseries, fruit tree plantations and eco clubs are not standalone activities but permanent teaching tools where students directly experience the principles of sustainable natural resource management. Training teachers on Youth Conservation resources and involving Basic Education inspectorates strengthened the project’s institutional legitimacy, while the diversity of activities — gardening, reforestation, art, sport, local knowledge — gave every child their own entry point into eco-citizenship.
Challenges overcome through adaptive management
The main challenge encountered at Adjane — a mid-year change in school leadership — delayed activities without derailing them: the TF-RD team chose to keep the club involved in the fair’s other highlights rather than treating the situation as a failure.
The diversity of school contexts posed a second challenge, with enrolment ranging from 48 to more than 300 students and very different realities in terms of cafeterias or available space. TF-RD responded with a flexible approach to harvest use: consumption at the cafeteria in Makak-Djeul, commercialisation in Somalomo to fund the next round of seeds.
Finally, to secure the activities’ sustainability beyond the funding period, several mechanisms were put in place: monitoring committees in each school, referent teachers, involvement of school councils, and reinvestment of harvest-sale revenue.
Phase 1 to Phase 2: more mature governance
Compared to the first phase, this second edition marks a genuine step up: a stronger institutional approach thanks to teacher training, more structured eco club governance — students themselves defined their vision and action plans —, the emergence of self-financing mechanisms, and the first-ever inter-club fair, which created a collective dynamic that hadn’t existed before. Changing schools, however, required fresh community mobilisation work, as the new schools didn’t yet benefit from the experience built up in Phase 1 — a one-off limitation that didn’t call the overall objectives into question.
A visible “before and after” in everyday school life
Before the project, environmental activities remained occasional and limited to awareness-raising. Today, the three schools have functional eco clubs, trained teachers, teaching gardens, nurseries, planted trees, monitoring mechanisms, and above all students able to pass on good practices to their peers themselves when the next school year begins. The project has effectively turned these schools into genuine spaces for learning eco-citizenship.
What’s next? Expanding the network around the Dja Reserve
TF-RD intends to keep building on this momentum by gradually expanding the network of beneficiary schools around the Dja Biosphere Reserve, continuing to mentor existing eco clubs, seeking new technical and financial partnerships, and developing further inter-school exchanges. The goal: to build a network of schools capable of durably spreading eco-citizen practices within their communities.
“The Acting project allowed TF-RD to strengthen its expertise in participatory environmental education, consolidate its network of partner schools, and demonstrate that combining practical learning, community engagement and the empowerment of local actors is an effective lever for shaping a new generation of eco-citizens,” the NGO notes in its Phase 2 report.
Want to support initiatives like TF-RD’s around the Dja Reserve? Discover the full “Acting for Nature Conservation” project and its ten partner NGOs at youth-conservation.org.
If you want to know more about the NGO, you can contact them directly through their Facebook page.
