The ?Kampung Sukau Wildlife and Elephant Trails Virtual Tours? project, in short Sukau Virtual Tours, based at Kampung Sukau, Kinabatangan, Sabah, aims to develop;
i. Social entrepreneurship opportunity for underemployed youth based on virtual tours along Borneo Pygmy Elephant trails around Kampung Sukau that showcase elephant behaviors and habitat.
ii. Develop and upskill youth through field work, science communication workshop and social media training for both virtual tours as well as personalized onsite tours.
iii. A wholesome program to prepare youth to be Green License tour guide ready by setting up a CBO that connects homestay operators, local food, seasonal differences, cultural and craft assets.

Virtual tours have the potential to provide a scientific experience of being in the Malaysian Bornean rainforest, explore an elephant?s habitat, observe the Borneo Pygmy Elephant?s diet (of over 180 different types of plants) and behavior along a typical trail to a learner anywhere in the world. Footage may include elephants swimming along the Kinabatangan river, browsing secondary growth or encroaching plantation areas (which is the source of human wildlife conflict). The virtual tour videos will introduce several Borneo Pygmy Elephant matriarchs who are monitored by Seratu Aatai. Drone footage will provide big picture understanding of the scale and pressure of this situation from a land use perspective. Shorter topic specific footage will be curated for classrooms use and could include the observation of footprints, dung samples, seed dispersal function and information on other wildlife that share the same habitat. Still photos and audio clips also have income generating potential. The Borneo Pygmy Elephant Virtual Tour will be the first of its kind in Borneo and become a point of reference for future programs interested to replicate this model.

The virtual tours will also highlight Elephant Conflict Management issues in human modified agriculture landscapes. These virtual tours are designed to address learners from around the globe who are interested in learning about megafauna in Borneo; specifically, the Sukau river basin area. Each video will include informational links for further reading and activity sheets for whole-class-participation. A localized version of the activity kit will be developed in Bahasa Malaysia for local school children allowing teachers to include biodiversity education in the classroom across the district and hopefully the country. This local version is in line with Global Citizen Education (GCED).

International Baccalaureate and IGCSE based schools have long used virtual tours to supplement classroom learning in providing site specific thematic content to aid learner?s inquiry and build deeper connections that raise empathy with the intention to encourage students to be advocates. These virtual tours will be available on subscription basis for the Sukau Youth enterprise which will include on the ground tours; both as income generating outcomes that the youth can keep on generating over time with the skills developed throughout this project beyond the 18month period.

Sukau youth who are participants of this program will be selected based on their interest in ecotourism, have family members who own homestays or tourism-based services, have interest in using technology and are unemployed or underemployed. They will begin their learning journey in a youth leadership workshop to identify their strengths and areas to improve whether it be their leadership abilities, skills, or communications to be Green License tour guide ready. Throughout the program participants will gain skills in photography, videography, writing and social media management which will be applied in marketing the Kampung Sukau Wildlife and Elephant Trails Virtual Tours on Patreon and Facebook Live. We are confident this team of youth participants will able to continue making videos of different animal trails, hosting local tours and conduct Borneo Pygmy Elephant workshops for school children independently of the RESTORE team once they graduate from this program. The youth participants will also be ready to recruit more members to share the work and expand their on-the-ground tours under the guidance of Sabah Tourist Guide Association.

As a part of hard skills development, participants will undergo Field Assistant and Science communication training, conduct Ecosystem Mapping and develop the Borneo Pygmy Elephant Virtual Tour trail under the supervision of Seratu Aatai and the RESTORE team. In understanding the movements of the Borneo Pygmy Elephants through agricultural land, participants will encourage small holder farmers to participate in community-based monitoring to collect data for the Elephant Conflict Management in Human Modified Landscapes toolkit as part of the area?s long-term management plan. This is crucial to ensure Sukau remains an area rich in biodiversity for sustainable ecotourism to continue flourishing despite the constantly increasing development activities.

The Youth Leadership component of this program will include a project-based challenge where participants will develop a Kampung Sukau Cultural Map, which captures cultural, traditional, culinary and seasonal assets interesting to visitors. This process is to have the youth engage with multigenerational members of the community including local artisan, food stall owners, smallholder farmers, teachers and tourism service providers like homestay owners as part of rediscovering their village to present to visitors. This will be first of its kind in the Kinabatangan area and will engage a larger part of the community; widening the impact of the project beyond the core youth participant group.

Despite a considerable percentage of youth having diplomas from local private-education institutions, youth employability in Kampung Sukau is currently limited. The lack of exposure and coaching leaves most of them demotivated to pursue jobs outside of Sabah or unable to fund innovative enterprise in their hometown. Uninterested in repetitive traditional laborious plantation jobs leaves these youth disenfranchised. This program aims to expose youth to a social enterprise-based approach to ensure the self-sufficiency of this project beyond our presence.

Ecotourism depends on maintaining attractive natural landscapes of rich flora and fauna while managing agriculture production; this program has the potential to offer a counterpoint to youth employability and future income resilience. As limited job opportunities coupled with the lack of exposure leaves youth working repetitive traditional laborious plantation jobs that further distances them from the uniqueness of their hometown. This project is designed to provide direct service of training to the local community through a social enterprise model and influence attitudinal change towards environmental conservation. We can see the potential of the youth team expanding their success in this program in knowledge transfer, where they are able to charge a service fee to help duplicate their successful model in neighboring communities who have the capabilities to run tours in their area as well as increase their presence when promoting their homestays (if any).

Virtual tours are curated experience which is localized to on the ground situations and issues; this is very different when compared to one off documentaries and free YouTube content. Virtual tours are made to be relevant for a certain duration until conditions and/or circumstances change, where content makers will continually create and update their tours based on seasonal changes; this gives a significant value differentiation as compared to the abovementioned documentary or YouTube content found for free when surfing the web. This also gives added educational value to viewers, hence the reason why International Baccalaureate and IGCSE based schools utilize content such as this in their classrooms and are willing to pay a fee for it.