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Win a Year’s Worth of School Fees
Wildlife Works is situated on the Rukinga Ranch, but its impact can be felt far beyond the ranch as it reaches out into the community of this area
L-R. Brett Girven, Principal - Arbor, Matthew Benjamin, Founder and CEO Kapes, Andres Foden, operations Manager - Arbor at Wildlife Works where the uniforms are made.
charcoal...conservation is the whispered undertone. The nursery garden employs gardeners, purchases seedlings from local individuals and gives those seedlings back to the community for free...more work, more self-supporting families...conservation goes from whisper to murmur. The rangers are locally employed, educated, trained, and unarmed. They educate their community, monitor and protect the environment, and minimise human-wildlife conflict... conservation begins to resonate loudly throughout the community. Natural selection favours those communities in which individuals act for the benefit of the whole community. As humans, we call this ethical behaviour. Ethics always has to do with community; it is behaviour for the common good. This visit to Kenya is to find an exemplar of social enterprise - business for common good. It would be next to useless, of course, to talk about the possibility of good solutions to wicked problems if none existed in proof and in practice.
PROOF AND PRACTICE
As a teacher, if you wish a student to know what an appropriate analysis of Othello might contain, you show them a previous example to critique. If you are teaching a multistep equation in a chemistry classroom, students need a worked example to see the process from start to finish. In the teacher world, these exemplars are called a WAGOLL - ‘what a good one looks like’. At Arbor, we are attempting to teach a programme of eco-literacy that moves from the obvious, practical and connected to the sophisticated and complex. Moving from muddy play experiential learning to social enterprise and environmental justice. What is missing at the highest level, for me at least, has been a tangible and successful WAGOLL of this nuanced approach. My visit to Rukinga and Wildlife Works has provided that WAGOLL, the proof and practice. In 1998 this success story kicked off as Wildlife Works opened with a vision of an ecological economy, an economy that had cooperation as a fundamental principle, where competition is subordinate, and where solidarity and compassion lead to a better outcome for everyone. With a dash of external expertise, these small but powerful community-based enterprises kicked off. Communities benefitted and began to own the solutions to the intractable problems that existed. But the major leap forward came when Wildlife Works and the local community monetized their number one asset... the trees. By monetizing the carbon-absorbing capacity (known as ‘carbon sequestration’) of shrubs, trees and soil, the impetus was created. Communities were encouraged and importantly resourced to start or restart
what is not new knowledge or new skills but refocused on a community that had for some time focused on egocentric, destructive, extractive and consumptive behaviours. The behaviours of survival.
FROM SURVIVAL TO ABUNDANCE
The father of Positive Psychology, Martin Seligman, uses a term, ‘north of neutral’. Positive Psychology is the science of helping individual human beings to flourish. The ‘north of neutral’ environmental equivalent could be termed ‘abundance’. Paradoxically, abundance is best achieved not through an approach of ‘more’, but an approach of accepting a measure of sufficiency - accepting that ‘enough is enough’ leads to ‘enough for all’. And the social equivalent, i.e. collective flourishing, could be ‘harmony’. Here in Kenya, I have seen a community which has begun to flourish, with teams of locally employed and empowered researchers measuring individual and community wellbeing. Although I can only observe from the outside, everything I saw and heard would lead me to believe that the direction of travel is certainly northward - towards flourishing. In an environment that the founder of Wildlife Works himself described as “a bruised, balding land, barren of wildlife”, we saw ample wildlife - elephant and buffalo, warthogs and baboons, cheetah and lion. Whilst it was a dry time of year in a drought-prone region, tree cover was everywhere, and dams both natural and man-made provided lifesustaining water for all animals. It is an environment that whilst under threat, is beginning to be the abundant landscape that we see in our mind’s eye when we imagine the plains of Africa. And most importantly, as envisaged by the founder Mike Korchinsky, the human world and the natural world are moving towards harmony. Human-wildlife conflict is reducing, animals are returning, and plant life is sprouting. Mike’s premise was that if you want wildlife, you have to make sure it works for local communities. Whilst this may sound a bit utilitarian, it seems to be working.
WHY AM I HERE?
So, what brought a school Principal to the middle of Kenya in the middle of term time when he should be running assemblies and checking on classrooms? Arbor has been on a journey of self-discovery to deliver an education that delivers on its vision of ‘enough for all forever’. That journey includes an up-levelled ambition of our original pillars - sustainability, eco-literacy and global environmental justice become the far more ambitious Flourishing, Abundance and Harmony. This expedition proffered the proof and practice of a social enterprise in action. I witnessed the positive impact of the energy we have expended at Arbor making a real difference, and envisaged new ways to bring experiential learning to the students of Arbor. Through the window of the gently rocking train, Mount Kilimanjaro slides by, shrouded in cloud. Tsavo National Park stretches endlessly out of sight on my other side, and the announcer describes how this section of railway was where the maneaters of Tsavo, a pair of hungry lions, ravaged the railway construction team during the era of colonial expansion and construction. The landscape is ever-changing, yet endlessly the same. As I return to Nairobi and onwards to the shiny but sepia-toned Dubai, I feel education is much the same. Transformation is slow, the process rocks from side to side with the buffeting of changing educational ideas, politics and personalities. Yet the journey is as important as the destination, the where, why and what having equal importance.
Everyone needs a bit of inspiration, and this has been just the dose I needed.
Kwaheri – Goodbye!
The new uniforms being made, ready to go out to students Brett at Wildlife Works learning about their approach to conservation and educating the local communities
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