Community outreach

Community Local Ocean Conservation

LOC are currently engaged with 26 local community groups in order to raise awareness about conservation issues as well as support capacity building and training. We use our motto ‘Love Your Local Ocean’ to emphasise the importance of local people taking responsibility for their natural environment to ensure its preservation for the future. All the community groups we work with engage in some form of community conservation. This includes coastal clean-up efforts, mangrove restoration and anti-poaching patrols.

Regular presentations and workshops are conducted at our Marine Centre as well as daily outreach and awareness at fish landing sites and villages. This helps to spread the word about marine conservation, ensuring people learn about their environment and how to protect it.

Our outreach efforts have greatly increased community participation in our work. A more informed local community now regularly take part in organised beach clean-ups, mangrove planting and other conservation activities as well as reporting on illegal activities and assisting with our sea turtle conservation initiatives.

Through our local community we are able to save thousands of sea turtles caught accidentally in fishing nets, ensuring the survival of several endangered species.

Community Empowerment & Capacity Building

We actively encourage the groups we work with to engage in Alternative Income Generating activities (AIG’s) to lessen their impact and pressure on the marine environment. There is a high dependency on fishing and tourism for livelihoods and we believe this to be detrimental in the long run if resources are not sustainably managed. The types of AIG’s our community groups engage in include farming, tree nurseries, bee keeping and gravel production.

These groups face many challenges such as lack of capacity, expertise, technical support and finances. LOC provides the support and motivation that our groups need in order to grow. Without this, many of these groups would collapse. We offer a constant presence in the community, organising training and capacity building workshops with partner groups, advice, support and any other assistance we are able to provide.