Local residents so eager about the Kwita Izina

The local that are living around Volcanoes National Park are so happy about this year’s Kwita Izina ceremony under the theme celebrating nature where they give names to all the gorillas that have been born in the year. They said that gorillas have tremendous changed their lives. The volcanoes is a home to almost half of the population of the most endangered specie, the  mountain gorillas in the whole world and it is shared three countries which are Rwanda, Uganda and DR Congo.  

Collette Mukeshimana who is a resident of Nyange Sector in Musanze District said that they get very excited every time the naming ceremony approaches, we feel like we have new family members joining us this is so because those gorillas have been very essential in boosting their businesses around and everyone in these communities directly or indirectly benefit from them.   Business is usually so good during the naming period because there are usually so many people that visit the place.

According to the records, last year, about 28,448 tourists visited the Virunga national park and 26,904 of them had come to see the mountain gorillas. And to ensure collective efforts from both the government and the people living around the park to protect it, government introduced a program where profits from the park are shared with the communities around.

This revenue sharing program started in 2005 and that year, the community received more than Rwf500m from the Rwanda Development Board to finance various projects in the park. This is some sort of encouragement to the locals to help protect the parks and the wild animals in it.

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