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The Manumanu Project

Using biophilia and insects to train a new generation of Tahitian citizen scientists.

The Manumanu Project

Guiding Principle

Humans have an innate connection and affection for the living world (“biophilia”), and by tapping into that connection through hands-on experiences with organisms during the formative years of their youth, we can inspire the future protection of biodiversity.

Make a Gift in Support of Project Manumanu Today!

Help us raise $15,000 by March 2025 to launch the Manumanu Project. Your tax-deductible donation will go a long way in helping us to work directly with Moorean school-age children identifying, collecting, and curating insects - inspiring the next generation of biodiversity guardians. Please email themanumanuproject@gmail.com to let us know you have made a gift and we will follow up with additional information.

Thank you!

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Project Overview:

The Manumanu Project is an educational outreach initiative under UC Berkeley’s Atitia Center, operated in collaboration with the non-profit Te Pu Atitia (whose goal is the preservation of Polynesian biocultural heritage). Manumanu (“insect” in Tahitian) is a 25-year project (2025-2049) that uses insect biodiversity to educate the next generation of Tahitians about the importance of their local ecosystems and to establish permanent science education infrastructure in the K-12 classroom. Rather than directly targeting policy change, Manumanu aims to foster the spirit of biophilia in young people to grow up to save their natural resources, modeling an approach that can be replicated on other Pacific islands and beyond.

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Manumanu association logo

Project leader Brad Balukjian, a Research Associate at the California Academy of Sciences and 2013 PhD graduate of UC Berkeley, will spend four weeks each year working with 4-6 fifth-grade classes at 2-3 different schools, training 110-165 schoolkids on how to identify, collect, and curate insects, with a particular focus on plant bugs, Balukjian’s specialty (with the help of these students, Balukjian discovered 17 new species of plant bugs in his doctoral research).

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Brad in the classroom - Paopao Moorea

 

He will also train the teachers at these schools to run the same curriculum in future years, addressing the French Polynesian curriculum standards for science.