Lewa's approach to wildlife conservation includes assisting neighbouring communities to both facilitate change in those communities as well as educating community members about wildlife conservation. Some other conservancies/parks/reserves, such as the nationally-run ones, do not have a strong community program and there is some animosity between communities and the government agency that runs the parks. If land is in short supply, particularly prime grazing land, communities may become understandably upset if it goes to protect animals rather than the people. Protected animals (there are some really big ones here, of course) can also destroy crops in neighbouring communities, thus affecting community food supply. Lewa's approach is to involve communities in wildlife protection by providing expertise and funding in various areas to communities. They work in several areas: 1) Water development (e.g., building gravity-fed water distribution systems for farms and homes); 2) Education; 3) Health care; 4)Agricultural development/education; 5) Infrastrucutre (e.g., roads); 6) Women's development (often through microcredit); and 7) Environmental conservation (e.g., game drives for students and forest development).
My role here is less actively involved in actual community outreach than I'd expected, but still quite interesting. I've been asked to write a newsletter and make a DVD of the community program's work over the last ten years. This requires going into communities and interviewing community members in various positions about their experience of the Lewa program and to inform the program of any issues that have yet to be addressed. Though it's mostly summarizing Lewa's involvement, there's a simple evaluative component as well. While making a video is not something I'm familiar with (beyond childhood videos with vacuum-cleaner robots), the interviewing is in my comfort zone and is proving to be very interesting. I've only done two days of interviewing thus far (just found out exactly what I'll be doing last week), but I've had some great conversations in that time and gotten a much better sense of the needs of surrounding communities, as well as learned much more about the Kenyan people. Everyone I've spoken with has been incredibly welcoming, even if my interviewing has eaten into the time they need to complete their work, which it almost always does.
This post is surprisingly detailed. Maybe other people are on to something with this explanation thing.
Well this is very helpful in understanding how you fill your days. Evaluation is something that is often left behind in development projects because there isn't a)time b)resources or c)understanding of how to do it. In my next life I would like to come back as a monitoring and evaluation expert who can help project managers implement these markers from before the project starts. My line is "how do you know if you are doing the right thing if you don't evaluate it?".
ReplyDeleteWe had a vacuum cleaner ghost at Halloween.