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Mwaroni Primary joins the Wildlife Warrior Program

We are delighted to announce that we have found a new partner school to participate in our Wildlife Warrior program.  Mwaroni Primary School is located in Diani Beach, Kenya, just a fifteen minute drive from Elewana’s Afrochic. With 631 students currently enrolled, and 20 teachers, Mwaroni is a lively school with a lot going on.

Mwaroni Primary has an active wildlife and environment club already, which is busy planting seedlings in the school nursery ready to plant out around the school grounds. The club is led by enthusiastic teachers Mrs Joyce and Mrs Mwamba. The Wildlife Warrior Club will work with the school environment club and we hope to help the children to go on some exciting field trips to nearby Mombasa.

Existing tree nursery

Wildlife club nursery

Tuition block

Semi-complete classroom blocks

Land and Life will also be raising funds for the school to buy a photocopier, and then provide much needed repairs to the girls toilet block which currently has no doors. Anyone who would like to help with these projects, please see our Ways-To-Give page and let us know your donation is for Mwaroni. You can also visit the school yourself, any time you find yourself relaxing in Diani.

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Good news for Esiteti Primary School

Good news for Esiteti

Earlier this year we received a donation of $42,000 from the A.E Reimann Foundation to fund our projects and activities at Esiteti Primary School near Tortilis camp. Part of the funds will go to the construction of 2 classrooms in the school to cater for the growing number of children in the school.

We have already identified a contractor who will be taking the project. Recently, our project coordinator took him to the school for a site survey. The construction is scheduled to start in mid August and we cannot wait to share the images of the progress of the project.

Still on Esiteti, another donor has expressed interest in funding the construction of a boys’ dormitory. We are currently working on a final quote for the construction and are hoping that we will tie this project to the classrooms’ construction.

These projects once completed will greatly improve the standards of education at Esiteti and the neighbouring villages.

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Wildlife Warrior Program kicks off in Tanzania

We are over the moon to report that in July the Land & Life Foundation launched the Wildlife Warrior Program in Tanzania. The first Wildlife Warrior session took place at Ganako Primary School in Karatu, near The Manor Ngorongoro.

Firstly, a donation of 150 text books was made to the school. This was greatly appreciated, because the school previously had no textbooks at all, and had been borrowing from other schools to hold classes. We also provided assorted stationery, notebooks and so on. This was all made possible by generous donors both international and local, and also by staff members of Elewana and Sopa who, you may recall, undertook the world famous Kilimanjaro Marathon in February to raise funds.

Following the donations, and after signing an official MoU with the School Committee, we held the first Wildlife Warrior Club conservation education session on the benefits of conservation. The session was facilitated by Lucy Evarest of Shanga Foundation, who kindly agreed to assist with this exciting event. We signed up 59 students to the Wildlife Warrior Club, and will be issuing membership cards to all the children shortly.

Ganako Primary School

The event was a great success and both the school and the wider community were delighted. The MP for Karatu, Cecelia Paresso, came to Ganako to observe the session and offer thanks for the efforts being made by Land & Life. We would like to thank Shanga for their support, and Rodgers, Assistant Manager at the Manor Ngorongoro, for his time and effort.

We hope to return to Ganako Primary with some more fun activities soon, and are looking now at Zanzibar and Arusha to start up activities there. Watch this space for more updates!

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Toilet project at Embiti

Embiti Toilet

Sanitation and hygiene in schools contributes to better health and educational outcome among school going children.  But just for a moment, imagine attending a primary school with no toilet!   This has been the situation at Embiti Primary School near Sand River Mara since the school was founded six years ago.

That was until last year when a very supportive group of young people staying at Sand River Mara, the Young Presidents Organisation (YPO), visited the school. Having seen the school and talked to the staff and students, the YPO group decided to donate US$ 1,000 towards a toilet project.

We are now thrilled to report that we have overseen the successful construction and completion of 4 toilets and 1 urinal for the children and staff. On a recent visit to the school, the toilet facilities were just about to be completed, and the staff and students are delighted with the improvement in their facilities. It is thanks to generous donations such as this one that the Land & Life Foundation is able to continue to make a real difference to the lives of communities living in and around wildlife areas.

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Tales from the Mara

Winning Poster - Ololomei

Last week I visited our supported projects at the Masai Mara.  My first stop was Ololomei Primary School near Elephant Pepper Camp (EPC) where I met the children and teachers and donated some textbooks to the school. Together with one of EPC’s guides Boniface, we held a Wildlife Warrior Poster competition based on this term’s theme “Living with Elephants”.   The posters were quite impressive but there can only be one winner, so we chose group number 5 who had produced a great picture which showed all elements of the complex living with wildlife challenges faced by the community – the elephants, the manyattas, the maize being eaten by elephant, the cattle under threat from predators, the tourists on a  game drive, the dams where the water is held and which attract elephant – a  great poster!  The winning group will go on a game drive on Tuesday 28th March and will thereafter have tea and biscuits at EPC – watch this space for photos and maybe some interviews with the children.

Aitong Health CentreI also had an opportunity to visit our supported health facility at Aitong Town. Thanks to the mounting support of donors the health centre has a recently completed maternity wing, with spacious facilities and new equipment. However it is lacking in power at present and therefore is not in use, which I found very disappointing. We would like to help with this situation and over the next month or two we hope to send an electrician to see how we can rectify this problem.  We also plan to scale up our annual medical camp scheduled for November, which provides free medical and dental care to the community. This year we hope to partner with like-minded organisations to expand our impact, and  we are looking at the possibility of introducing the National Health Insurance Fund to the community as well as bringing in a wide range of medical specialists. We will keep you updated as we go along.

My last stop was at little Embiti Primary School just outside the gates of the Maasai Mara Reserve and supported by Sand River Mara. The school has 115 students from nursery up to Class 4, and the top two classes impressed me by their memorising the Wildlife Warrior pledge!

Watch the video:

Here we have provided funding for the school’s first and only toilet block, which is about to be finished. I am delighted about this as it will make a real and immediate impact on all students and staff at the school who currently have no toilet facilities at all.

I brought printed colouring sheets for the youngest children with pictures of the wildlife of the Mara, and large sheets of poster paper for the older Wildlife Warriors, and set the Warriors a poster competition on the topic of “Our Favourite Wildlife”. The winners will be taken on a game drive in the Game Reserve and be treated to a picnic lunch by SRM guides and managers.

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Another Milestone for the Land & Life Foundation

Recently, we held our first Wildlife Warrior Program Poster Competition at Embiti Primary School near Sand River Mara (SRM). The children drew amazing posters based on this term’s theme ‘The Importance of Forests’. A group from the Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO) based in Thailand and who were staying at SRM also joined us at the school.

SRM Camp guides together with teachers from Embiti sat in the judging panel while the YPO group and members of the School Management Committee formed part of the audience.

The highlight of the event was when the group announced that they would sponsor all the pupils from Embiti to go on a Game Drive to the Maasai Mara National Reserve. The children and their teachers were elated upon hearing the good news!

The group also pledged a further $1,000 donation through the Land & Life Foundation to the School. This donation will go a long way to fund the much-needed toilets.

Many thanks to Claudia de Vries together with the rest of the Sky Safari team, Julia Binks, George and Theresa (SRM Camp Managers) and all SRM Camp guides for their help.

Last but not least, we are very excited to inform you that our online payment system is now activated. Donors can now support our life-changing work from the comfort of their own homes and places of work. Please share this good news with all your contacts and agents.

As always, if you have any questions about our work, please feel free to contact our team.