Campi ya Kanzi and Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust: a unique and innovative model
This eco-friendly lodge lies on the slopes of Kenya's Chyulu Hills (The Green Hills of Africa of Ernest Hemingway), which look toward majestic Mount Kilimanjaro.
Quoted in National Geographic magazine as an eco lodge where tourism can help people and nature, it is built from local materials and uses solar technology to supply hot water and electricity to the six luxury tented cottages and two tented suites.
The 400 square mile Maasai Reserve has many different habitats, reflecting in a great array of wildlife. Beside the famous Big Five many other uncommon animals are present, like wild dog, cheetah and lesser kudu. Together with classic game drives, a game walk with a ...
Sobre Você
Dados de Contato
Título
Title (e.g. Mr. Ms.
Nome
Luca
Sobrenome
Belpietro
Your job title
Your Job Title
Nome da sua organização
Campi ya Kanzi
Organization type
Organization Type
Orçamento anual/moeda
Annual Budget/Currency
Mailing address
PO Box 236 Mtito Andei
Telephone number
+254 45 622516
Postal/Zip Code
90128
Country
Quênia
Website
Endereço de email
Endereço de email alternativo
Alternative email address
Sua ideia
Este será o endereço utilizado para posicionar sua inscrição no mapa.
Street Address
Campi ya Kanzi, Chyulu Hills
City
Mtito Andei
Estado/Província
Postal/Zip Code
90128
Country
Quênia
Geotourism Challenge Addressed by Entrant
Quality of tourist experience and educational benefit to tourists , Quality of benefit to residents for the destination , Quality of tourism management by destination leadership , Quality of stewardship of the destination.
Organization size
Small (1 to 100 employees)
Indicate sector in which you principally work
Tourism-related business
Year innovation began
1998
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Indicate sector in which you principally work
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Campi ya Kanzi and Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust: a unique and innovative model
Descreva Sua Ideia
This eco-friendly lodge lies on the slopes of Kenya's Chyulu Hills (The Green Hills of Africa of Ernest Hemingway), which look toward majestic Mount Kilimanjaro.
Quoted in National Geographic magazine as an eco lodge where tourism can help people and nature, it is built from local materials and uses solar technology to supply hot water and electricity to the six luxury tented cottages and two tented suites.
The 400 square mile Maasai Reserve has many different habitats, reflecting in a great array of wildlife. Beside the famous Big Five many other uncommon animals are present, like wild dog, cheetah and lesser kudu. Together with classic game drives, a game walk with a ...
INOVAÇÃO
What is the goal of your innovation? Please describe in one sentence the kind of impact, change, or reform your approach is intended to achieve.
Sustainable development eco-tourism, where wilderness create an economic income to the Maasai landlords, to preserve their cultural and wildlife heritage.
Please write an overview of your project. Include how your approach supports or embodies geotourism or destination stewardship. This text will appear when people scroll over the icon for your entry on the map located on the competition homepage.
This eco-friendly lodge lies on the slopes of Kenya's Chyulu Hills (The Green Hills of Africa of Ernest Hemingway), which look toward majestic Mount Kilimanjaro.
Quoted in National Geographic magazine as an eco lodge where tourism can help people and nature, it is built from local materials and uses solar technology to supply hot water and electricity to the six luxury tented cottages and two tented suites.
The 400 square mile Maasai Reserve has many different habitats, reflecting in a great array of wildlife. Beside the famous Big Five many other uncommon animals are present, like wild dog, cheetah and lesser kudu. Together with classic game drives, a game walk with a professional guide and red-robed Maasai tracker will be the highlight of the safari.
Campi ya Kanzi is proud to have tried a new way of conservation, through the complete involvement of the local Maasai landlords. Guests assist with this by contributing a daily conservation fee of $100, which is spent toward the welfare of both men and wildlife.
Responsible eco-tourism preserves the wildlife heritage of this important East African wilderness and allows the Maasai to continue their traditional way of life - more than a millennium old.
Explain in detail why your approach is innovative
Nobody before has invested in a tourism project who is owned by the local community and not by the investor. Nobody before has chosen to build a lodge with the local community, and instead outsiders contractors have always been used.
Meaningful innovation is the water collection and treatment: we collect all our needed water from the rains, we recycle both gray and black water, in a pond for the wildlife.
We cook our food with a UNEP charcoal project, produced from coffee husks. We recycled all our organic waste in a compost and take care of the recyclable non organic wastes.
We have created the Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust, whose is mainly financed by the $100 conservation fee paid per day by each visitor.
The Trust employs 120 local people as game scouts (for conservation programs), as nurses and doctor (for health programs) and as teachers (for education programs).
Most innovative initiative was to employ mainly local people, doing in house training. The 16 beds camp employs 55 Kenyans, mostly local Maasai.
Impacto
Crianças & Jovens
Describe the degree of success you have had to date. How do you measure, both quantitatively and qualitatively, the impact on sustainability or enhancement of local culture, environment, heritage, or aesthetics? How has it transformed or contributed to the power of place or demonstrated the sustainability of tourism? How does your approach minimize negative impacts?
Through the application of the best available technologies (solar electricity, solar hot water, recycling of water and wasters, uses of eco-friendly fuel) we have contained to the minimum our environmental impact.
Maasai culture is self protecting, as the Maasai have a very strong sense of self identity. By protecting their wilderness we are consequently protecting their cultural and wildlife heritages.
The combined impacts of Campi ya Kanzi and MWCT are quantifiable in a net income for the Maasai community of about $700,000 (seven hundred thousand) per year.
By preserving the environment (through our conservation programs, including a predator consolation programs where felines are protected through the reimbursement of livestock they pray) we are creating the conditions for preserving the Maasai culture and for offering a unique tourism experience.
Campi ya Kanzi has been recognized internationally for his innovative and eco-tourism approach, serving as an example of sustainable tourism which benefit the local community.
Crianças & Jovens
In what ways are local residents actively involved in your work, including participation and community input? How has the community responded to or benefited from your approach?
By having been involved and employed since the very beginning, first as the builders –even if they did not have such skills – then as waiters, guides, drivers, mechanics, cooks, etc.
MWCT policies are decided with the broad involvement of the local community, engaging leaders from different areas and representing different age sets (Maasai are divided in age sets).
The community has responded in the best possible way: seeing in wilderness with thriving wildlife non the threat of the past, but the best opportunity for their future as Maasai.
The community is now the guardian of their wilderness, wildlife and culture.
Crianças & Jovens
How does your program promote traveler enthusiasm, satisfaction, and engagement with the locale?
Campi ya Kanzi hosts only 16 guests. Lunch and dinners are taken together at one table. They represents great opportunities to discuss in depth their experiences.
A detailed verbal and visual briefing is provided on arrival, to each guest.
Ample literature is provided in the tents, explaining why Campi ya Kanzi is doing what it does (preserving the land, to preserve the culture and the wildlife).
Maasai guides and Maasai trackers are engaging the visitors, providing a unique connection to this ancient culture.
Describe how your work helps travelers and local residents better understand the value of the area's cultural and natural heritage, and educates them on local environmental issues.
The all idea of a stay at Campi ya Kanzi is about learning the Maasai culture, while playing an active role in preserving it.
The local Maasai have learnt that a genuine ecotourism venture such Campi ya Kanzi is the best tool to preserve their land and provide them with income (employment) and services (conservation, health and education programs).
The concept that wilderness with wildlife is economical productive has been widely embraced, providing a sustainable conservation model.
At school level pupils are engaged in conservations workshops and lectures.
Temas relacionados à inscrição
SUSTENTABILIDADE
How is your initiative currently financed? If available, provide information on your finances and organization that could help others. Please list: Annual budget, annual revenue generated, size of part-time, full-time and volunteer staff.
Campi ya Kanzi was financed by Luca Belpietro, his wife Antonella and their friend Giulio Tomaselli. An investment of about $3,000,000, including an aircraft to move guests in and out of camp (a Cessna 206).
The camp has been profitable for the last 6 years.
The yearly expenses budget is about $360,000 of direct costs, plus the costs related to hosting the guests.
Revenues are in the range of $600,000 to $900,000 per year.
Campi ya Kanzi employes about 60 people, all Kenyans except 2.
The volunteer work is limited to the Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust.
Is your initiative financially and organizationally sustainable? If not, what is required to make it so? Is there a potential demand for your innovation?
Yes and no: yes it is financially sustainable has it does not operate at loss; no it is not financially sustainable if an investor wants a return on the investment.
We did not invest in the Campi ya Kanzi project for a quick return in the investment, but more to create a sustainable eco-tourism model, to lead the conservation tourism industry.
This goal has been achieved.
We believe that with such premises the business model is fully replicable.
What are the main barriers you encounter in managing, implementing, or replicating your innovation? What barriers keep your program from having greater impact?
The barrier in having a better bed occupancy is how the Country we operate in (Kenya) has promoted itself over the years (poorly and mainly as a mass tourism destination).
External and internal factors have played negative roles (economic crisis, post election violence in 2008).
A small ecotourism camp such ours does not have the marketing budget needed for communicating as widely and as broadly as needed.
We do not see any difficulties in the management, out of normalcy of being in a African Country.
The replicability is linked to the low profitability of the business model.
What is your plan to expand or further develop your approach? Please indicate where/how you would like to grow or enhance your innovation, or have others do so.
We do not have desire of expanding the tourism business side of our model, but we wish to expand the philanthropic side, approaching institutions dedicated to conservation, to gain their constant support and consolidate, while also expanding the, our conservation, health and education programs.
A História
Please provide a personal bio. Note this may be used in Changemakers' marketing material.
I was born in Italy in 1964. Since I was 10 I was brought on safari by my father, a passionate naturalist.
I spent my youth summer holidays in Kenya, learning about farming, ranching, hunting.
I did my thesis in Kenya on wildlife as a renewable resource and decided to dedicate my life to conservation, through the establishment of a joint venture ecotourism initiative with a community of Maasai in Southern Kenya and through the founding of the Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust, whose goal is to protect the wildlife and cultural heritage of the Maasai.
What is the origin of your innovation? Tell the Changemakers and media communities what prompted you to start this initiative.
I did my thesis in Economics in “Wildlife as a renewable resource: sustainable development and environmental conservation”.
My thesis was the occasion to learn that 75% of Kenyan wildlife live outside of National Parks.
In our ecosystem (Tsavo/Amboseli), it has been studied over a period of 30 years that 90% of the plain game of Amboseli National Park live outside of the Park boundaries for most of the year.
Unless the Maasai landlords see some economic value in the presence of such (problematic) wildlife in their land, the wildlife is doomed.
Wildlife is bringing in diseases, competing for the grazing, preying the livestock on which the Maasai depend upon: in order to convince the Maasai community that wilderness with wildlife is something worth protecting, they both must come economical productive for the community.
This simple concept is what prompted me to act and involve, meaningfully, the entire Maasai community in seeing the benefits of a real eco-tourism initiative.
Describe some unique tourist experiences that your approach provides. Be specific; give illustrative examples.
- connect genuinely and intimately to a Maasai community, as the camp and the land which surrounds it is owned by the same Maasai community who is hosting you.
- contribute with your visit to the genuine protection of the culture you are learning.
- enjoy game walks with a Maasai tracker, in his land and benefit from his ancestral knowledge of it.
- learn about the threats and the challenge this part of Africa is suffering, while you are contributing to preserve it.
What types of partnerships or professional development would be most beneficial in spreading your innovation?
Unless African wilderness where local communities are trying to preserve their culture becomes economical productive for such communities, it will be impossible to have sustainable conservation policies.
The contribution that Campi ya Kanzi makes to the Maasai community is a shining example of the way that the romance and adventure of tourism in the last, best wild places can actually help preserve those places for the future.
 | 220 semanas atrás Luca Belpietro enviou esta ideia. |