The African Conservation Fund

African Conservation Fund's primary vision can be summed up as "Investing in People to Win Back the Space for Wildlife." No program embodies this more than our new "Art for Conservation" program, called Sanaa Africa (sanaa means "works of art or handicrafts").

This past September we met with eight women's groups in Maasai communities in Kenya and Tanzania's Rift Valley (related reports, here and here). These meetings culminated in a plan to assist these ladies' groups and their communities by purchasing their beadwork to market in the West, as well as to assist them in building their businesses, products, and marketability.

Why Beadwork? 

A hallmark of a healthy ecosystem is diversity and resilience, which help sustain life  through adversities such as drought, fire, and disease. Likewise, healthy human communities will have diverse income sources so that their well-being is not tied to one volatile income source such as agriculture, livestock, tourism, or international aid.

While our partner, African Conservation Centre, has been successful in turning wildlife into assets in key areas in the south Rift Valley, with over a dozen communities involved in creating private game reserves and income-generating ecotourism ventures and jobs in game protection and management, we need to continue to introduce diverse economic opportunities in order to enhance the communities’ resilience to these threats and unstable economic factors.
 
Sanaa Africa: Art for Conservation aims to provide income for communities in two ways:

1.    Immediate, dependable income from sales of traditional and non-traditional art and bushcraft, or sanaa (beadwork, leatherwork, basketry, woodworking, etcetera); and

2.    A fund (Neema kwa Sanaa – Wealth from Art) from the net retail proceeds for small grants and micro-loans to support conservation projects and more economic endeavors.
In this two-step approach, we enhance local economic independence without charity, and leverage community-generated funds to support further economic and conservation opportunities.

Our first beadwork order will arrive in the U.S. in early December 2006. We will have a small selection available online for Christmas orders by mid-month. 

 We will be expanding the program as we bring on new partners and funding to expand. Please contact us if you can help in any way.