7 minute read
SPOTLIGHT ON
The Mountain Lioness Scholarship
The literal translation for the Swahili word “Ngumu” is “tough”. This is a common word we use to describe the courageous, trailblazing female porters that defy social stigmas to work alongside their male counterparts and climb to the top of Africa’s highest mountain, Mt. Kilimanjaro.
To celebrate these remarkable female porters and to inspire other women to get their qualifi cations to climb to the roof of Africa, we launched our Mountain Lioness Scholarship in March 2020, with the help of our partners, Robertson Outdoor Bursary. The scholarship itself was named after Lucia Kivoi, nicknamed “lioness”, because of her pioneering spirit as a Senior Guide and woman who helped to spearhead the acceptance of female porters on Kilimanjaro. Over the next three years, this scholarship programme will enable 30 women to train as mountain guides and gain their Guide License, signifi cantly increasing their employment opportunities and offering them a stable income so they can support their families; many are single parents.
Despite some COVID related delays to the fi rst year of this programme, our fi rst 10 lionesses completed their mountain guide course in November, having been trained up in topics such as Mountain Ecology, First Aid Emergency Care and Wilderness Rescue. We look forward to tracking their progress over the coming months and years as they start to put these skills into practice on the mountain, providing a shining example to other women in their community of the heights that can be reached.
“We are delighted that the Mountain Lioness Scholarship programme has enabled 10 women to complete the recent guide training course. Climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro alongside some of these men and women porters while fi lming the Exodus documentary, Ngumu, I was exposed to their physical and mental determination. This, coupled with having to develop some of the skills which are needed to take the steps from porter to guide, are imperative profi ciencies for their onward progression. I look forward to seeing the progress of this programme develop and hope it can support the porters into being aspirational and limitless.”
CRISTA CULLEN TRUSTEE
SPOTLIGHT
Worth More Alive X
It’s now been 11 years since Paul Goldstein, Exodus’ expert guide, photographer and conservationist, first ran the London Marathon in his - now legendary – 14ft tiger suit. Over the last decade, his ‘Worth More Alive’ campaign has sought to, as Paul puts it, “demonstrate that the beautiful Bengal Tiger is just that – worth more alive to the communities that live alongside them through the tourism income they help generate, than dead at the hand of poachers and the despicable demands of traditional medicine.”
Since that first London Marathon, Paul and his suit have run 16 marathons, and conquered Kilimanjaro too, raising $300,000 in the process. This money has built a new school, bought ambulances and patrol vehicles, drilled bore holes and funded facilities for many outlying villages.
At the end of 2019, Paul set his most ambitious target yet, to raise £100,000 through the campaign’s 10th iteration, by participating in the 2020 London Marathon once again, closely followed by the daunting Everest Marathon. Unfortunately COVID’s cancellation of both Marathons put this campaign on ‘paws’, but despite that, Paul has already managed to raise an incredible £60,000 of his target, through a variety of events and auctions, and the generosity of a number of supporters dedicated to tiger conservation. The campaign is merely in abeyance; he is still training and if he cannot complete the Himalayan challenge in 2021, he and his team will do so the following year. He is confirmed to run the Brighton marathon in September, 10 years after his first 26 miler on the South Coast.
The donations have already enabled our partner in India, the Corbett Foundation, to undertake much of the planned rebuilding and equipping of two schools in Bandhavgarh, on the boundaries of the National Park famous for its tiger population. This work has included building protective boundary walls, proper toilets and kitchens, and solar water pumps to supply the schools with clean drinking water. Paul says, “By providing 1,000 local children with an education effectively underwritten by conservation, this initiative is helping highlight to the surrounding communities the benefits of their striped neighbours, and contributing to the protection of tigers from poachers, encroachment and conflict.”
““There are two schools adjoining Bandhavgarh park. They educate over 1,000 children in the community, and frankly their facilities were in total disrepair, which is why I wanted their schools to be completely rebuilt on a sustainable basis with The Sal & Mahua Schools Project. When the number of pupils and teachers see what has been done, they will understand just how important their striped neighbours are. It is here where the essence of the whole campaign lies, and what we’ve been building towards over the last 10 years. Considerable work has been completed already and would not have happened without considerable generosity from many sympathetic patrons. However, the world is a di erent place now, charity is in short supply so these incredibly kind donations are more important than ever. As for the tigers, they will need more than a vaccine to keep them from extinction.”
PAUL GOLDSTEIN EXODUS GUIDE, WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHER & CONSERVATIONIST
SPOTLIGHT
Community Kickstart Project
As COVID-19 caused a sudden pause to travel around the world, our thoughts quickly turned to our extended Exodus family; our expert local teams of leaders, operators, porters, drivers, and the communities around them. The people that welcome Exodus travellers and share their world with us suddenly faced a signifi cant economic impact from the global halt in tourism. In response, the Exodus Travels Foundation launched the Community Kickstart Project to help those communities to recover and rebuild while we all wait for the world to open its doors again.
The Project aims to support and enable our teams on the ground to kickstart grass roots initiatives which will help support their local communities through tourism’s pause, and then rebuild out the other side. After all, our expert and passionate Exodus Leaders and operators are best placed to identify the greatest needs across our destination communities and hard-to-reach places, and help create the solutions.
By the end of 2020, and thanks to the generosity and support of so many Exodus clients, we had been able to fund 11 initiatives across Africa, Asia and Latin America, from building bricks out of plastics waste to construct a community café, to handing out food parcels to porters and park drivers, to educating communities around preserving their wildlife, to supporting education catch up programmes. Our aim is to continue to build and extend the impact of the project across many more of our destinations communities in the year to come; we can’t visit them right now, but through the Exodus network, we can show them we’re standing with them.
“Our passionate and committed Exodus leaders and operator partners already do so much to support their local communities. At this time of greatest need, we are pleased to enable them to kickstart initiatives bringing aid and recovery to the places we have taken travellers to visit for many years. We want to show these communities they’re much in our minds and hearts as they face the signifi cant economic impacts caused by tourism’s current halt.”
KASIA MORGAN HEAD OF SUSTAINABILITY AND COMMUNITY
