Last month, Year 12 Study Ambassador Leader Scarlett Daniels, attended a fundraising biodiversity ball in the Royal Botanical Gardens, Edinburgh, hosted by Lady Amelia Windsor, Patron of the Cross River Gorilla Project (CRGP).
The CRGP is a UK based charity, whose main aim is to help preserve the critically endangered Cross River Gorilla, particularly the population in South West Cameroon. The species is on the brink of extinction, with less than 300 remaining.
The CRGP raises money to support existing conservation efforts in Cameroon and works with Newcastle University and other groups like Youth Ambassadors to troubleshoot conservation challenges facing this remote part of the world. They also support the community that surround the rainforest through educational initiatives and women’s empowerment programs.
The spectacular CRGP biodiversity ball took place to promote environmental biodiversity, as well as championing cultural diversity through the collaboration of Nichols State University, Newcastle University and Edinburgh University, as members of Students Against Species Extinction (SASE). This event also aimed to help the younger generation become more involved in trying to solve the worldwide crisis of extinction and animal endangerment.
Year 12 student Scarlett Daniels, CRGP’s Youth Poet Laureate, wrote and designed the posters for two of her original poems which sought to encourage people to consider our human impact on endangered species and to further contribute to the conservation conversation. Her poems, Our Land and The Hunt, were displayed at the event alongside work by Sylvia Plath and Emily Dickinson and are published on this page too.
Scarlett has also been involved in the development of a new poetry competition which will be launched in schools in Cameroon to help end period poverty; this is just one of many women’s empowerment programmes which fight to end female injustice.
Visit www.crossrivergorillaproject.co.uk for further information.
Our Land
A trade: your land for ours
But now as I watch with
A blaze in my eye and a prick in my heart
I see the flames crackle and crumble.
A blooming flower uncurling its contagious touch with a brilliant flame
That scorches the fresh budding kiss of nature
The Hunt
Birthed from the same marrow of our blood
That nurturing likeness an instinct – so why is it in ours to hunt?
To slaughter and mock
These kind eyes
O beastie brother mine,
Forgive me
For taking your home
Those connected wonders
Severed
At our selfishness
