Hello everyone,
My name is Jakob and I‘m currently working as a Program Manager for WCS Congo at Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park.
In the past 15 years I‘ve mainly worked in primatology, doing research at university and conservation work around gorillas and chimpanzees for WCS. Great apes are especially fascinating to me.
During this time I‘ve also become more and more involved in training students and doing local capacity building. It‘s something that I really enjoy, guiding people in scientific work and I
find it very rewarding to enable students to carry out their own research.
In the long-term, I would like to work at the intersection of conservation research and (local) capacity building – that‘s also why I joined WildHub.
If you have any questions about research on great apes or conservation organizations working in this field, feel free to contact me :)
Cheers,
Jakob
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Hi Jakob, welcome to WildHub!
It is really amazing to hear your journey working with gorillas and chimpanzees. It must be full of stories! Would you kindly share a bit more about how you mentor students or design training sessions? I’d love to learn from your experience 🌻
Hi Fairuse,
Thanks for the welcome :)
I‘ve been working with students and pupils in several different settings already, as a seminar leader at the University of Kent, as a language teacher in Switzerland and Germany, at public school in Germany for a year as well. In my experience it‘s important that students do practical work as well, directly apply theories that they learn about. After many years at university (where lectures and courses are very theoretical at most times), that was very helpful advice from a colleague at school. With local (Congolese) research assistants and university students, I used some of my teaching materials to do conversational English lessons, practical lessons (Excel, R) in statistics and in reading and writing scientific papers. An example: we analysed how the introduction of a scientific paper is generally structured (starting with the bigger picture and then narrowing down to test a theory). As an exercise, students had to color-code these different steps in actual publications and write an introduction for their own project.
Let me know if you have any more specific questions (we can start a threat or exchange messages)
Dear Jakob,
Thank you for your message and for sharing your inspiring background. It's great to connect with someone so deeply involved in both great ape conservation and local capacity building, two areas I also feel strongly about.
Your experience with WCS and your dedication to mentoring students truly resonate with me. As someone with several years of field experience in environmental monitoring and anti-poaching, particularly within Garamba National Park in the DRC. I greatly admire your commitment to empowering local researchers and advancing primatology.
I’m currently seeking new opportunities to apply my skills and grow further in the field of conservation, and I would truly appreciate any advice or guidance you might offer. I’m especially interested in contributing to research or field programs focused on great apes, and would be eager to assist or collaborate in any capacity, including internships, volunteering, or research support roles.
Please feel free to take a look at my profile for more details about my background:
🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/fidele-kasangandjo-mwagalwa/
I’d be grateful for any opportunity to learn from your experience, and I’m open to any suggestions you might have.
Looking forward to staying in touch!
Warm regards,
Fidèle Kasangandjo
📧 fidomwag@gmail.com
Hi Fidèle,
Thanks for your message, it‘s nice to connect! And great to see that you have already gained valuable experience at Garamba NP. Learning English is an important step for working in conservation (internationally), so congratulations on having already mastered this step.
If you‘re interested in great apes, I suggest subscribing to WNPRC‘s primate-job list via this link:
https://primate.wisc.edu/primate-info-net/the-pin-career-groups-jobs-volunteer-opportunities-degree-and-other-programs/
It lists pretty much all primate-related jobs world-wide (and I‘ve found several jobs via this list myself, including the one with WCS).
I can also put you in touch with some of my Congolese (Brazzaville) colleagues who might be able to provide more local resources to you.
Cheers,
Jakob
A warm welcome to WildHub Jakob! Wonderful to have you join us and that our paths cross again here! Thank you for sharing about your background; very interesting! Local capacity building is definitely a topic that we discuss here in the community and I personally feel very passionate about!
I would also recommend joining our member Social events (dates here) which is a great way to get to know other members. Let us know if you have any questions :)