We're
Connection Africa, a 501c3, "gold
star" Philanthropic organization (EIN 47-2274738). We are an ALL
volunteer organization. Our board consists of business professionals
with over 40 years of combined non-profit management expertise.
Our concentration is to
help mitigate human/wildlife conflicts,
especially the one's that contribute to the plight of
elephants in West African Countries. We believe that in order
to help elephants not be hunted or killed for invading farms and
communities, we
must help the human conditionsthat contribute
to the pain, suffering and ultimate death of elephants invading
disenfranchised communities.
We're raising funds for Kajire, Kenya to
feed approximately 500 children that attend one
school. It is hard for these children because they often do not have
anything to eat. Imagine trying to study and learn your lessons with a
growling, empty belly? Imagine growing up knowing there's no hope for
your future but to remain living in poverty?
This is a campaign to bring HOPE to this community. To fulfill
the needs of the proposal below:
FEEDING and EDUCATING CHILDREN,
EMPOWERING WOMEN and
Providing JOBS for an ENTIRE COMMUNITY!
Ultimately HELPING to SAVE OVER 200 ELEPHANTS
a YEAR from being KILLED!
Working in Partnership with - Abdurahman
Farouk founder of
The Pillar of Hope (PoH)located in
Kajire, Kenya, and is a community based
organization registered in Kenya under the ministry of Gender,
Children and Social Services. Kajire, Kenya. and host approximately
500 peasant households.
PoH is situated along the Mombsa Highway on the southern part of VOI, a sub county bordering Tsavo National Park which is home to many breeding/nursing herds of Elephants that are often targeted by poachers and/or attacked by village farmers to keep them from eating their crops. Poachers & wildlife traffickers often prey on poor men, offering them money to hunt elephants for their tusks.
SITUATION OVERVIEW:
When extreme poverty prevails, when hunger exists, it is hard to elevate a child’s life much less the lives of an entire community. When children go uneducated, poverty is likely to be the legacy handed down from one generation to another, for many generations to come.
When hunger exists it contributes to underdeveloped and uneducated children. It’s hard to concentrate on studies and lessons when children are trying to exist on one, small meal of beans and rice per day. Uneducated children become unemployed adults who often turn to a life of crime to survive.
Poverty breeds desperation which forces some to become criminals in order to survive. In this part of the world poor men & children are targeted to work with wildlife traffickers to poach elephants for their tusks or, wildlife hunters to sell into the illegal meat market.
A poor community is likely to suffer from greater ill health and disease. Any ‘poor’ community, but to the point of this proposal, this, “our” poor community exists but is very strained. Living below a one-dollar budget for both for saving and expenditure puts unimaginable pressure on people and ultimately the environment they live in. Wildlife will pay the ultimate price for just walking through a poor community – death. When hunger knocks death steals any hope of survival for wildlife much less humans.
Having considered the importance of conservation of environment and wildlife we need to lead the poor out of poverty with opportunity. To create opportunity we must secure the ability to educate our children. When parents have to pay for their children’s basic education, it creates a level of desperation. It’s often difficult to convince hungry, poor farmers, struggling to care for their families that wildlife matters more than their children.
So, if we are to SAVE our iconic, keystone wildlife, i.e. our precious elephants, we must work to end poverty or at the very least create a path to alleviate poverty. We must work on how to improve the basic needs like food, clothing shelter and sanitation through education and ultimate economic development for humans. Thereby, if we are to save wildlife and the surrounding environments than we must be prepared to help end poverty.
Education is the key to change the world. We support education and welcome our community members to learn about the many benefits of supporting our environment and wildlife as a means to a brighter future for our children. In order to accomplish this, given that the main economic foundation of our community is farming, we must provide support for our farmers to learn how to live in harmony with wildlife. This will be a turning point to pull them away from poaching/killing of animals and cutting down trees for livelihood and survival.
Our plan is to reach out to farmers, engage them in our organized workshops about the environment and the benefits of wildlife and how we can work together. We’ll hold these workshops in a convenient, centralized location, our school.
Additionally, we’re developing a curriculum for school children. If we can reach our youth and develop an appreciation for the environment and wildlife in our surrounding area than they will grow up to be protective adults. The most vulnerable residents we will reach out too is therefore, two fold: 1.) Educating ‘healthy’ children and 2.) Generating crop security for farmers affected by invading elephants.
Farmers’ crops, for years, been destroyed by invading elephants in search of water and food. The destruction of crops force farmers to not be able to provide for their families. Children become afraid to attend school when elephants come into town. When parents cannot financially provide for their children, especially young girls who have reached adolescence in need of sanitary towels, then girls stop attending school.
The purpose of this proposal is to appeal to people of Goodwill to help us facilitate our proposed pilot project:
- Provide lunch program to the needy students at primary school
- Provide sanitary towels to the girls at upper classes ‘
- Generate awareness on the importance of wildlife conservation and environment
- Install beehives to mitigate human/elephant conflicts and,
- Develop the potential for economic growth
With this project we envision improved performance in school, the first step to alleviate future poverty level, and the reduction of human/wildlife conflict and poaching:
three-step program
- Help children obtain a proper education (boys and girls alike)
- Provide one meal a day
- Sanitation products for young women
- Expanding sports education
- Generate awareness on the importance of conservation and
peacefully resolving human wildlife conflicts that SAVE elephants’
lives
- Installation of beehives
- Sound systems
- Elevate people out of poverty
- Economic development
- Planting of trees
- By products from beehives
- Economic development
Benefits of programs
Proper Education for Children:
- Hunger affects our children’s inability to learn. By subsidizing them one meal a day will increase their learning ability.
- When girls reach that magical age, if they do not have sanitary products they often do not attend school. When they fall too far behind the often drop out of school all together. It is believed that if we can educate the girls of the world, we can ultimately change the world’s future.
- It is a proven fact that when young people are kept involved in extra-curricular activities their idle minds and hands often fall prey to crime. Sports, lends to mental acuity and problem solving skills.
Conservation Awareness:
- The only way to save keystone species like elephants from
extinction is to employ those that live with them to have such a
value for them they will not allow for them to be poached much less
will they kill them themselves
- By helping farmers to protect their crops from invading elephants, we allow them the ability to sustain their crops from destruction.
- By installing beehives and/or bee sound systems we prevent
elephants from invading farmers fields and trampling and destroying
their crops.
- By installing bee sound systems we can detour elephants from invading homes and towns in search of water.
- When elephants no longer invade homes/towns people will not be afraid to leave their homes and children will not be afraid to walk to school
Elevate Community out of Poverty:
- Trees are a renewable resource. However, if trees are not replanted than they can not be a renewable resource. By educating our children on their surrounding environment and enlisting their participation in the replanting of our trees we raise future good stewards of not only our community but our surrounding environment and wildlife.
- Elephants are afraid of bees. By installing beehive fences we:
- Generate a deterrent for elephants to invade crop
- Prevent the destruction of crops
- Farmers obtain greater yield of crops thus generate greater earnings
- Women, harvesting the honey/wax from hives earn income independence
- Children (especially young girls) are given advanced educational opportunities
- Community receives financial infusion thus expanding other career development opportunities, i.e., construction jobs, sales jobs, carpenters, etc.
ONE-MONTH BUDGET for Program:
Per FIFTY STUDENTS
Item quantity price total
Food
Rice 300 kg 160 48,000
Beans 150 kg 100 15,000
Cooking Oil 50 kg 100 15,000
Salt 4 kg 50 200
Water/firewood Community Contributions
Sanitary towels for 50 girls
Sanitary Pads
100 pkts 100 10,000
3 Day Awareness Workshop for 50pupils
Lunch
50 200 10,000
Tea 50 100 5,000
Snacks 50 50
2,500
Facilitation . 3 @1,000 ×3 trees
9,000
Stationery
Pen 50 20
1,000
Note book 50
50 2,500
Mark pen 4
100 400
Flip charts
1 Roll 500 500
Logistics
3,000
SUB-TOTAL per MONTH 113,500
ONE time Electronic equipment 150,000
TOTAL Project (Price is in Kenyan shillings) 263,500
Conversion to US dollars is approximately1/10 of total shilling
TOTAL PROJECT in U.S. Dollars $ 2,653.00 per MONTH
$ 19,135.00 per YEAR
Just imagine, for only $1.50 per day, around $400 a year a child can go to school and have a meal. Because they'll have a full belly, they'll be able to study and focus on their education. When a child grows up educated, they are less likely to become involved in criminal activity.
Why care about the children in Africa? Why care about the elephants in Africa? Why Africa when there are obviously so many children around the world that need food and a chance to grow up and be able to pull themselves out of poverty.
Africa's population is the fastest growing continent on Earth.
Their populations are growing faster than India and China's combined.
The world can NOT afford to turn their backs on African countries,
their people, the CHILDREN and definitely NOT their keystone species.
WE are all going to need the adults of tomorrow now the children of today, to grow up educated and HEALTHY. We need them to have an understanding and value for the elephants that maintain the environments they'll need to provide economically stability.
The rest of us need these elephants to continue to manicure the world's 2nd largest rainforest... where we get 17% of the oxygen all life needs to breathe. With the world's population expected to rise to 9 billion by 2050, and if elephants (as well as the additionally 100+ species that depend on elephants) go extinct, what will future generations breathe?
The year 2050 is only a few decades away.
It's imperative we protect the future for future generations to come.
PLEASE make your donations today.
NO donations are too small.
Please do not hesitate to
contact us if you have additional questions. Maybe you work for
a corporation that can help by sponsoring the $19K for one year?
PLEASE let us know. Time is of the essence:
CA4elephants@aol.com
The Children and Elephants THANK YOU for caring!
CA4Elephants.org
