GREENVIET and lessons on nature conservation communication

Passionate about the mission of biodiversity conservation

In the first minutes of the program, Ms. Trang introduced GreenViet Center with all the enthusiasm and passion of someone who has been dedicated to biodiversity conservation for many years.

GreenViet Biodiversity Conservation Center (GreenViet) was established in September 2011 with the aim of raising awareness, promoting community action in biodiversity conservation and environmentally friendly behavior, and sustainable use of Vietnam's biodiversity resources. The main activities of the Center include: Research - Communication - Education - Policy Advocacy. With a team of experienced and passionate staff, GreenViet has been gradually implementing its mission of "Researching and disseminating the value of Biodiversity in the context of climate change to help the community form a lifestyle friendly to nature". The Center aspires to become the leading Center for research, communication and education in the field of Biodiversity in the Central Highlands region by 2020. To achieve that goal, GreenViet has implemented projects and communication activities to many target groups in the community.

Currently, GreenViet Center is mainly researching, educating and advocating policies to protect the Red-shanked Douc Langur. The Center chose this animal for many reasons. Firstly, this is a rare animal with 98% of the same genes as humans, they have very similar habits and activities to humans. Secondly, the Red-shanked Douc Langur often lives in primary forests that can be restored, protecting the Langur means protecting their habitat, thus killing two birds with one stone, both preserving the rare species and preserving forest resources. In addition, Ms. Trang also shared the reason why Da Nang was chosen as the first place to implement this activity: "Unlike the red-shanked douc langur in other areas, the langur in Da Nang, if it encounters danger such as forest fires, will find it difficult to run to another forest, so it is more likely to become extinct. GreenViet chose Da Nang as the first place to implement and develop this model, then gradually bring it to other localities to protect the red-shanked douc langur."

It can be seen that GreenViet has initially built its image by clearly defining the organization's purpose, mission and vision. These are the basic orientations that help GreenViet develop effectively and stably in the long term. In addition, the Center's brand is also expressed through the meaning of the name GreenViet_Green Vietnam development associated with the green color of nature. With such a solid foundation, GreenViet has been successfully implementing many conservation communication projects aimed at many different audiences in the community.

Photo: Pham Kien Trung

Ms. Le Thi Trang - Deputy Director of GreenViet Center shared about communication campaigns related to biodiversity conservation for students majoring in Public Relations.

Targeting multiple audiences in the community

For each different audience, GreenViet has a different approach. Understanding the characteristics of each audience group helps GreenViet easily design and implement programs.

Children are a group of people who easily absorb knowledge. If they are aware of nature conservation from a young age, when they grow up, they will certainly have good awareness and not harm the environment. This is like "prevention is better than cure". GreenViet understands that nowadays children have few opportunities to be exposed to natural reality, love to play and quickly absorb knowledge through experience. Therefore, the Center has had diverse educational activities to help children "learn while playing, play while learning". Activities can be mentioned as: teaching children monkey dance; organizing the program "Discovering the world of wild animals"; Son Tra Little Green Guards program... these are journeys to explore nature, observing firsthand the lives of animals, especially the red-shanked douc langur.

Many students asked questions to the speaker/Photo: Pham Kien Trung

Students or young people are a dynamic public group, eager for new things and new experiences. They also easily absorb knowledge and especially young people, with their youthful energy, can spread the message of environmental protection, becoming young leaders in educational communication. Understanding this characteristic, GreenViet has brought programs such as: Garbage collection on Son Tra peninsula, Student photo contest, groups of friends and Da Nang sea, talk shows such as Son Tra Youth Union members learn about Son Tra biodiversity, ... these activities help young people, especially students, raise awareness of environmental protection and wildlife conservation.

The local community is the broadest and most complex group with many different characteristics. With this group, GreenViet also implements many diverse activities such as: Project to improve conservation capacity for Da Nang volunteers, Da Nang community discussion to join hands to protect the Red-shanked Douc Langur in Son Tra, project for people to clean up Son Tra peninsula... Among those activities, we must mention the program "I love Son Tra" - a long-term project being held every Sunday with the welcome of a large number of people. "I love Son Tra" is a journey to explore and admire nature so that each participant will feel nature and create their own products such as articles, pictures, posters...

GreenViet hopes that tourists will also love Son Tra and be aware of protecting the environment here. To do that, they decided to target tour guides, who are in direct contact with tourists. GreenViet organized a training course on "Propaganda skills for biodiversity conservation in Son Tra Peninsula for tour guides and staff in charge of tourism activities of the Management Board of Son Tra Peninsula and Da Nang tourist beaches". This activity contributes to widely informing tourists and promoting Son Tra.

The civil servants are identified as a special group. They are policy makers or have influence on the promulgation and implementation of policies. Therefore, GreenViet identifies that this group also needs to understand conservation so that environmental policies can be easily passed. The main activities for this group are training courses, information seminars or nature exploration tours.

Through the above activities, it can be seen that GreenViet is very flexible in approaching its audience. They have found the right audience groups related to their work and launched programs suitable for the characteristics of each group. Some successes include: The image of the Langur appearing on New Year's lucky money envelopes, the program was highly appreciated by the chairman of Da Nang city, children are more aware of not throwing stones at animals or young people are aware of maintaining hygiene when visiting...

Coordinate diverse communication methods

The above projects are mainly communicated directly, with thousands of leaflets, brochures at the airport, on taxis, images at bus stops and especially the cost for those activities comes from businesses. GreenViet has cleverly learned their orientation, found common ground and combined. This is also one of the important communication skills to reach a mutually beneficial compromise. Other communication activities such as press relations (talk show on Da Nang TV), launching media publications such as magazines, books and newspapers about the Douc Langur... In addition, GreenViet has recently used the social network Facebook for its communication activities, this is also the future development direction of the Center.

GreenViet has been applying many forms of communication activities: direct communication with events, leaflets, brochures, images displayed at waiting rooms, cafes; building relationships with the press or using social media. It can be seen that this is a direction quite suitable for the trend, opening up many ways to "touch" the thoughts, emotions and change the thinking of many people.

In the face of media crises, GreenViet has shown to be very skillful and professional in handling them. In February 2016, a group of people destroyed the forest. Immediately after learning about the situation, GreenViet investigated and provided information to the authorities for them to handle. The good thing about this incident is that GreenViet both maintained the city's good image (not spreading the news everywhere, the information was mainly local, enough for the authorities to intervene), and solved the problem (providing information for the authorities to quickly resolve and speaking out with positive official information).

With the support of local authorities and the community, GreenViet has overcome many challenges to successfully implement programs and projects on biodiversity conservation. What GreenViet is doing is not simply preserving nature, but also contributing to tourism development, joining hands to build a beautiful image of Da Nang - the most livable city in Vietnam. With efforts and constant innovation in communication activities, with the principle of“Use internal resources, mobilize community participation, do things that the community approves of”,GreenViet certainly also attracts support and contributions from the community for the good goals and missions it is pursuing.

Our talk ended later than expected. Everyone had their own concerns. But the passion and valuable lessons learned from GreenViet’s communication activities still lingered deeply in the minds of us, third-year students majoring in Public Relations.