Danny Samandingkes (IF'11)
Danny Samandingkes
Papua New Guinea
Tree Kangaroo Conservation Program
"I consider my participation in the iLEAP Fellowship as an opportunity to upgrade and expand my professional development skills. I further consider the iLEAP Fellowship Program as a learning avenue to interact with different people from all works of life and to further understand the different cultural communities and environments they live. I look forward capitalize on to build and improve my baseline skills as a leader and further look out to adopt new ideas, knowledge and skills to critically understand and analyze their beliefs, customs and experiences to be able to bring back and blend these ideas into the existing programs to make positive change for my organization."
About The Tree Kangaroo Conservation Program
The Tree Kangaroo Conservation Program aims to protect the critically endangered Matschie’s tree kangaroo, which is a culturally important species for Papua New Guinea. Within the last three years, the Tree Kangaroo Conservation Program has been successful in protecting 187,000 acres of cloud forest on the Huon Peninsula of Papua New Guinea, the habitat and home of the tree kangaroo.
About Danny
Danny has worked with the Tree Kangaroo Conservation Program as an education coordinator since 2009. He has been a key member to the program by working within the teacher training scholarship program. He has assisted in formalizing the education committee and the overall functions of the education project. Through his work, over twenty-six local teachers have been trained in only nine years. Danny also played a key role in the creation of the Junior Conservation Education Ranger Program, focused on conservation education for youth. Through his work with the Tree Kangaroo Conservation Program, he has also assisted in program collaboration with national and international conservation organization and zoo educational departments such as Live and Learn (Kimbe, Papua New Guinea), Research and Conservation Foundation, RCF (Goroka, Papua New Guinea) and the HUTAN & KOCP organizations in Borneo, Malaysia, Education Department of Woodland Park Zoo, and Seattle as well as with a similar department of Saint Louis Zoo in California. You can watch Danny, referred to as the "teacher", in action in the video below by Deutsche Welle.
