Binoculars4charity

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Photos: Conservation Heritage – Turambe

Conservation Heritage – Turambe (CHT), a Rwandan non-governmental organisation dedicated to environmental education and community-based conservation, is the latest beneficiary of a donation of eight binoculars and two spotting scopes. This equipment will play a vital role in enhancing CHT’s nature education and outreach programmes in the Musanze and Nyabihu districts, particularly in the areas surrounding Volcanoes National Park, which is home to the endangered mountain gorillas.

Established in 2013, CHT works closely with local communities, particularly schoolchildren, to promote environmental awareness and encourage peaceful coexistence with wildlife. The newly donated optical equipment will be incorporated into several key initiatives:

• Educational wildlife viewing trips: CHT organises regular visits to Volcanoes National Park and occasionally to Akagera National Park, for local schoolchildren. The binoculars and spotting scopes will significantly enhance these experiences by allowing students to observe animals in their natural habitat and deepen their appreciation of Rwanda’s rich biodiversity.
• Nature education programmes: The equipment will be used in citizen science and conservation education activities to make learning more interactive and engaging. Students and community members will be able to observe birds, primates and other wildlife closely, fostering a deeper understanding of the importance of biodiversity and environmental stewardship.
• Community outreach events: During events aimed at raising environmental awareness, the donated devices will be used to provide participants with hands-on learning opportunities, thereby encouraging greater public involvement in conservation efforts.

These programmes are expected to benefit over 500 schoolchildren and numerous community members. By making wildlife observation more accessible, the equipment will empower local residents, especially young people, to play an active role in protecting Rwanda’s unique ecosystems.

“We are deeply grateful for your support”, said Pacifique Nshimiyimana, Conservation Education Coordinator at CHT. “These tools will significantly enhance our fieldwork and conservation efforts in our work here in Rwanda, and we look forward to using them to inspire the next generation of environmental stewards.”

We are delighted to support CHT, and we would like to express our sincere gratitude to the donors who generously provided the equipment, as well as to everyone who played a role in ensuring its safe delivery to Rwanda.

For more information about CHT’s activities, please visit their website, Facebook, X and Instagram profiles.

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Photos: Entebbe Birding Club

The Entebbe Birding Club (EBC) is a registered community-based organisation headquartered in Entebbe, Uganda. The club’s primary goal is to promote environmental conservation by protecting birds and their natural habitats. The club organises regular excursions, training sessions, and exploration activities across Uganda. Through these initiatives, the EBC aims to empower tourist guides, students, and community members by equipping them with the knowledge and skills to raise awareness of the threats posed by habitat loss and degradation. The club is also committed to providing practical guidance and solutions for habitat restoration. The EBC’s vision is to foster a future in which Ugandan communities are fully aware of the presence and behaviour of birds, their conservation needs, and the importance of protecting their natural environment.

The EBC currently has over 120 registered members, yet fewer than 40 of them own a pair of binoculars. To help bridge this gap, we donated 6 binoculars and 2 spotting scopes to the organisation. To celebrate the arrival of the equipment and emphasise the importance of youth-led conservation, the EBC hosted a special event at the Uganda Wildlife Education Centre (UWEC). The event was broadcast live on NTV Uganda, showcasing how young Ugandans are raising environmental awareness through birdwatching. During the event, EBC members had the opportunity to test the donated equipment, receive hands-on training in how to use it properly, and join UWEC staff on a birding excursion. The participants’ excitement and appreciation from the participants were truly inspiring.

We were especially moved by the words of Miiro David, a leading EBC, who said: “Long live Binoculars4charity, long live Mother Nature.” We would like to express our heartfelt gratitude to the generous donors and to evreyone helped to ensure the safe transport of the equipment to Uganda. Your support is helping to build a new generation of conservation leaders.

To learn more about EBC’s activities and upcoming events, please visit their Facebook page.

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Photos: WSCC

We recently received news and photos from the Wildlife Science and Conservation Center (WSCC) in Mongolia. We sent them six additional pairs of binoculars after providing them with binoculars and spotting scopes some time ago (see our blog post). The binoculars are expected to benefit around 1,000 local children and students who visit the Khovd Bird Ringing Station (KBRS) in western Mongolia each working season. Since 2019, the KBRS has coordinated long-term monitoring programmes of migratory birds based on bird banding and has hosted environmental education and birdwatching activities for the general public. Further information can be found on the WSCC’s website and Facebook page, as well as on the KBRS Facebook page.

We are very grateful to our donors for enabling us to continuously support the WSCC!

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Photos: Atlas des Oiseaux de Côte d‘Ivoire

The optical equipment collected during the 2024 Swiss Ornithological Institute Partner Meeting was used to support the African Bird Atlas Project, a well-established citizen science initiative designed to capture bird distributional data across wide spatial scales. This contributes to our understanding of, and ability to conserve, the continent’s rich avifauna and ecosystems, while promoting sustainable land use.

In March 2025, nine binoculars and two spotting scopes were delivered to Grand-Bassam for the launch of the “Atlas des Oiseaux de Côte d‘Ivoire” project. According to Alain Jacot, a partner of the African Bird Atlas Project at the Swiss Ornithological Institute, “the current lack of optical equipment is one of the main issues that could hinder future ornithological activities in the region”. The equipment will be used by the Atlas project participants to collect bird observations according to an established protocol.

To continue supporting this important project on the African continent, we need more donations of optical equipment! Click the links to learn more about the African Bird Atlas Project and the involvement of the Swiss Ornithological Institute.

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Photos: Waterberg Development Initiative

By the end of 2024, ten pairs of binoculars and a spotting scope with a tripod had reached their final destination in South Africa. This equipment was donated to the Waterberg Development Initiative (WDI), a community-driven non-profit organisation that is dedicated to fostering sustainable tourism and economic development in the Waterberg region. With a mission to cultivate and sustain the area’s wildlife and tourism economy, the WDI focuses on raising awareness and providing education and training to anyone who wishes to participate. WDI actively identifies and addresses local needs, facilitates opportunities, encourages cooperation, and promotes infrastructure and service development through skills training, ultimately fostering local employment and community empowerment.

Lucas Namanyane, an avitourism partner at WDI, is thrilled with the donation: “What a privilege to have such a wonderful opportunity to work with such equipment! It has sparked so much debate and a need for training, education and experience”. The binoculars and spotting scope have been used in workshops at local schools and will support avitourism training and activities in various locations in and around the Waterberg region.

We are delighted to have been officially appointed as honorary partners of WDI and to support their work on avitourism and environmental education. We would like to thank all the donors who made this possible, as well as everyone who helped us deliver the equipment to South Africa.

For more information about the Waterberg Development Initiative and its activities, please have a look at their website and Facebook page.

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Photos: Foundation “Niños de los Andes”

The latest news comes from Colombia, where the Foundation “Niños de los Andes” (Manizales branch) recently received a donation of 11 binoculars, 1 monocular and 1 camera. For over 30 years, the Foundation has been helping to change the lives of hundreds of vulnerable children and adolescents whose rights have been violated and who have suffered abuse, neglect, exploitation, street life and poor schooling, by providing them with a home, education, health, nutrition, sports and recreation.

Located in a rural area of the city of Manizales, the Foundation currently provides comprehensive residential care for 150 children and adolescents. It is surrounded by 12 hectares of native forest that is rich in biodiversity. Recognizing the healing power of nature for children, last year the Foundation started a bird-watching project and formed the “Children’s Brigade – Custodians of the Forest”. The aim of these activities is to instill in the children a love of the land and of science, to arouse their curiosity and to provide them with a good foundation for their future careers, “with the illusion that they will become future biologists, doctors, zoo technicians, artists and much more”. They are now preparing the publication of the booklet “Species that live in our forest”, which will facilitate the spread of knowledge among the children. The donation of the optical equipment has been fundamental to these projects and has even encouraged a campaign to raise funds by planting trees.

We are touched and delighted by this success story and would like to express the gratitude of the “Niños de los Andes” Foundation to those who donated the equipment. For more information about the foundation and its activities, please visit their website and Instagram profile.

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Photos: Kiraksal Biodiversity Management Committee

In March 2020, in the midst of a pandemic lockdown, a few young naturalists from the village of Kiraksal in Maharashtra (India) started birdwatching, leading to the formation of the Kiraksal Biodiversity Management Committee. Their goal was to encourage local community members to protect grassland biodiversity, documented through a People’s Biodiversity Register and supported by the eBird platform. Despite starting with limited resources, including just a pair of binoculars, their passion attracted local children, forming a dedicated team of young naturalists who expanded their observations to include butterflies. Now with over 50 members, the committee works with local institutions to conduct various nature programs, from snake awareness sessions to celebrating Bird Week and International Wolf Day, showcasing Kiraksal village as a prime example of pandemic-driven community reconnection with nature and sustainable environmental activism.

To support the activities of this young organization, Binoculars4charity donated 4 binoculars, 2 spotting scopes with tripod, 1 camera with digiscoping accessories and a backpack, which recently arrived in Maharashtra. We are happy to share the words of Chinmay Sawant, one of the leaders of the committee:

“Our gratitude towards Binoculars4charity is immense. This birding equipment proves invaluable for our wildlife monitoring efforts and for documenting waterbirds during the winter season. The Kiraksal Biodiversity region is home to more than 200 species of birds, a testament to its ecological richness. Our local youth, who once partook in bush hunting, are now actively involved in conservation efforts and serve as guides for tourists, transforming Kiraksal into a burgeoning ecotourism hotspot. This transformation has been made possible through this generous donation. We extend our heartfelt thanks for your initiative in supporting our cause.”

We are more than happy to share this good news with all our donors and look forward to supporting more projects! For more information about the Kiraksal Biodiversity Management Committee, please visit their Facebook page.

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Photos: Ibera Birding Center

After a long and arduous journey, a spotting scope and two binoculars have reached their destination in the province of Corrientes in northeastern Argentina. The equipment will be used by the visitors of the Iberá Birding Center, where the local community and schools can discover and learn about the rich avifauna of the region. The Iberá macrosystem and Ramsar wetland, which has a catchment area of approximately 1,4 million hectares, is home to the endangered Yellow Cardinal (Gubernatrix cristata), the bizarre Strange-tailed Tyrant (Alectrurus risora) and the charismatic Red-and-green Macaw (Ara chloropterus), among some 500 other bird species. The area is also important for the livelihood of the Guarani nomadic communities and as a tourist hotspot. The donated equipment is expected to be used by some of the approximately 1,000 monthly visitors of the center. We are very happy to support this project and thank the donors who made it possible!

For more information about the center, visit their Instagram profile @birding_center.

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Photos: Provita

We’re very happy to share some good news from the Macanao Peninsula in Venezuela, where our most recent donation of 6 binoculars arrived some weeks ago. The recipient of the donation is Provita, a non-profit Civil Society Organization founded in 1987 in Venezuela, dedicated to develop innovative socio-environmental solutions to conserve nature. This is done through research projects on the state of and threats to the country’s biodiversity, educational initiatives to address conservation issues in partnership with local communities, and concrete conservation projects that work directly to conserve species and ecosystems.

The donated binoculars will be mostly used by the “Cielo Verde” (Green Sky) project, a behavioral change campaign that aims to reduce the demand for endangered wild birds in Venezuela, with the Yellow-shouldered Amazon (YSA) being one of the focal species. One of the activities developed by “Cielo Verde” is birdwatching with the local community as a way to offer direct encounters with wild YSA, thus providing an alternative to enjoy them without the need to keep them as pets. For the remaining of 2023, Provita aims to organize a monthly birdwatching outing, involving at least 350 participants. The donated binoculars will allow for more people to join and learn a different way to interact with the magnificent YSA and enjoy nature, and to establish a continuous birdwatching program for the public schools in the area. In the words of Daniela Pineda, lead of the campaign, “each time we hand a pair of binoculars to a community member, we can see the excitement and gratitude reflected in their faces. These binoculars have brought nature closer to those who didn’t have the opportunity to experience it in this way before, and have sparked a greater interest and care for our birds and the environment”. In addition, the binoculars will be used to conduct population surveys of the YSA and generate the scientific data needed to support future research and conservation strategies of the species.

As always, we extend Provita’s, the “Cielo Verde” team’s, and the benefited communities’ gratitude to the donors that made this possible, and encourage more people to support our work through the donation of optical devices or of money to cover the shipping of the donations. More information about Provita’s work and the “Cielo Verde” campaign can be found on their website, Facebook and Instagram profiles.

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Photos: WSCC

In a bid to support the crucial efforts of the Wildlife Science and Conservation Center (WSCC) of Mongolia, we are thrilled to announce our recent donation of two binoculars, two spotting scopes, and two tripods. These essential tools will contribute to the center’s ongoing research, monitoring, and conservation initiatives, furthering their mission to protect and preserve the magnificent wildlife of Mongolia.

Founded in 2004, the WSCC is one leading non-governmental research organization in Mongolia, dedicated to conserving wildlife and their habitats based on scientific research outcomes. Since 2015, the WSCC has embarked on a long-term research program focused on songbirds at the Khurkh Bird Ringing Station. Building on this success, they established the Khovd Bird Ringing Station in western Mongolia and, just last year, opened the Ugii Lake Shorebird Research Center at an unprotected Ramsar site. The Ugii Lake Shorebird Research Center is dedicated to conducting regular counts of every shorebird and waterbird from April to October each year, as well as undertaking breeding wader census and research during the spring and autumn migration periods.

The donated binoculars, spotting scopes, and tripods will primarily be used by the approximately 30 visiting university students and international volunteers hosted by the center each year. These optics will prove invaluable to those students and volunteers who do not yet own optical equipment but will widely utilize them for studying shorebirds at the Ugii Lake. In addition, the donated optical instruments will be used to demonstrate bird observation and educate local school children and other visitors at the research center. The center aims to share knowledge about birds and their stories with the local community, fostering a deeper understanding and appreciation for wildlife. With an expected reach of 300 to 500 visitors during each operational season, the donated binoculars and telescopes will enable the WSCC to engage and inspire a wide audience.

We are honored to have the opportunity to contribute to the WSCC and thank the donors that made this possible. For further information on the WSCC, please visit their website or their Facebook page.