Conservation Program Update: Luci Lights Initiate Change

In late 2014, New Course donate a number of Luci Lights, courtesy of MPOWERD, to the Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust (MWCT) to empower women of the local Maasai community. 

The women's group in Ilchalai with their new Luci Lights

The efforts of the Luci Lights program by MWCT have been continuing in a diligent way!  MWCT has coordinated a number of community outreaches to the communities of Iltilal, Kuku, Langata, Olorika, and Ilchalai to distribute the Luci Lights to existing women's groups. 

The women's group in Olorika meet to discuss ideas for income generating enterprises

The purpose of the distribution of the Luci Lights, and partnership with New Course, is to not only reverse the negative health affects from the traditionally used kerosene lanterns, but also to provide a platform for the women to be empowered, and to establish an alternative income generating enterprise for themselves. Having the ability to utilize saved money from no longer purchasing kerosene, the women can each contribute regularly to a project or enterprise or idea that will benefit them in a sustainable way. 

Women of Iltilal come together to learn more about the Luci Lights

Community outreaches have been continuing throughout the month of March and into April. Thus far, a total of 273 Luci Light solar lanterns have been distributed across 5 different villages, and a total of 11 women's groups. 

The women of Iltilal learn how to properly use their new solar lantern

The Nkaramata Women's Group of Iltilal thrilled with their new lanterns!

Particularly inspiring stories have emerged as a result of this project. The women of these communities are utilizing the revolutionary technology in innovative ways, while coming up with creative ideas that are benefiting the groups and themselves. 

The women of the Kuku Grass Seed Bank are also given the opportunity to receive Luci Lights

Learning about the solar charging abilities!

The growing women's group in Langata!

Predominantly inspiring has been the women's group from Langata village. Having grown from a small number of 7 members, to a sustained number of 37 members since the Luci Lights idea was introduced to them, the Langata women demonstrated a true expression of commitment to the mission of the Luci Lights as well as excitement to be a part of a new and innovative project on Kuku Group Ranch. 

The women of Langata learn about their Luci Lights

The chair lady of the Langata women's group had previously expressed a concern to MWCT about the low number of members in the group, and the disconnect of membership that she was witnessing. The group has now shown tremendous achievement in their now very large following, their desire to attain environmentally friendly lanterns, to rid of their kerosene, and to do something substantial as a group that will benefit them. MWCT looks forward to witnessing the women of Langata as they grow as a group, and efficiently and systematically save their kerosene funds to benefit the group as a whole, contribute to the betterment of the environment, and to their families health. 

We are thrilled to hear of success stories within the community, resulting in the empowerment of women, reduction of harmful emissions, and contributions to the creation of a unified groups becoming a powerful entity within this community. 

Even in the daylight, the power of a Luci Light is something extraordinary! 

Solar Lights for Women's Empowerment

The Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust is pleased to report on some exciting news that has evolved over the past few months as a result of an exciting collaboration. The organization New Course has donated 300 portable solar lanterns (produced by MPOWERED) to MWCT. New Course is an organization seeking to empower women around the world through innovative programs in "conservation, sustainability, and poverty alleviation".

Conservation Manager, Lana Muller, and well as MWCT Outreach Officer, Joseph Lariumbe,
together with the one of the women's groups from Iltilal

The lights, named "Luci Lights" are elegant, light-weight, maintenance free, and waterproof solar lights that are easy-to-use, and of high quality!

Demonstration of how the lights work and how to best care for them

The distribution of the donation will be to women's groups across Kuku Group Ranch. Currently, most Maasai women are buying kerosene for lighting in their homes. Not only is this an expensive investment, it is also very damaging and harmful to their health of the family living inside the home.

The women receiving their lights and testing them out!

The women are given the offer to receive a Luci Light, if they agree to contribute 50% of the money that they will save on fuel on a monthly basis, to the women groups. This money will be used by the group to start their own enterprise (ie. selling beads, purchasing energy efficient cooking stoves, etc.)

MWCT has organized meetings with 7 women's groups of 5 different villages on Kuku Group Ranch to introduce the lights to the community. The villages visited thus far have been: Iltilal, Kuku, Langata, Olorike, and Ilchalai.

Very grateful for their lights!

There is tremendous enthusiasm amongst the women in the communities across Kuku Group Ranch that have taken part in this project thus far. The lights are benefiting them in sustainable and tangible ways; mothers can breast feed at night, children are able to study at home in the evening, and health benefits are improving as they are not producing smoke such as their kerosene lamps.

Women testing out their lights

These lamps have helped thousands of people around the world, and are now having a wonderfully positive impact on the Maasai community of Kuku Group Ranch. 

Further, the lights have also been distributed to 8 MWCT Community Ranger sectors. Each sector has received two lights to improve their living conditions and promote the light project in the community. The rangers are all very positive about the change with the lights, and many have request to get a Luci Light for their wife at home. Any woman part of a women's group on Kuku Group Ranch will have the opportunity to purchase a light.

The Treasurer of one of the Iltilal Women's Group counting their savings

Please visit MPOWERED's website at https://www.mpowered.com to learn more about these solar lights. We look forward to continue to update you on the progress of the distribution of these lights!

Luci Solar Lights distribution across Kuku Group Ranch. Orange Luci Lights pictograms show locations of women group Luci Lights project; Green Luci Light pictograms show position of ranger teams with Luci Lights.

Health Program Update - Kuku Sports Tournament

The third annual Kuku Sports Tournament was a great success!  Hosted in Iltilal, the tournament brought together 285 youth and coaches from Kuku Group Ranch, Nairobi, and Magadi.  This fun-filled, community-building event promotes exercise and sportsmanship while nurturing local athletic talent.  It also provides an excellent platform for health education and advocacy.  The theme of this year’s tournament was “Improving Reproductive Heath, Hygiene, and Sanitation.”  When not on the field, participants learned about the prevention of HIV/AIDS and the eradication of female genital mutilation (FGM).  The tournament was jointly sponsored by the Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust, AMREF Health Africa, and Shokut Naretoi Community Project (a partner of Dorcas Aid International).

Twelve football (soccer) teams and six volleyball teams participated in the tournament, competing in a total of twenty-six football matches and fifteen volleyball matches.  In addition to the 285 participants, ten referees officiated and crowds of spectators gathered to watch.  The tournament began with a colorful opening ceremony and lasted for three days, with game play following a knock-out structure.

On the sidelines, a health station offered voluntary HIV testing and counseling services.  In the evenings, tournament participants attended health forums in their residential quarters.  One forum focused on female genital mutilation, while the other focused on responsible sexual behavior.

At the end of the tournament, organizers crowned first, second, and third place winners for both football and soccer.  All teams that placed received a trophy.  In the end, however, the ultimate winner is the community.  A Maasai elder hoisted a trophy on behalf of all to represent the importance of this group effort.  Physical activity, good sportsmanship, and health advocacy are essential to the well-being of all young people in Kuku Group Ranch.

Education Program Update - Dreams Turned Reality!

July 3, 2014 was the official grand opening of the brand new Iltial Primary School Library! With the presence of MWCT Founder, Luca Belpietro, MWCT President, Samson Parashina, MWCT Education Coordinator, Titus Muia, and Charles and Rita Field-Marsham, the library was officially declared open! A truly exciting day for the community of Iltial, the Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust, and the whole of Kuku Group Ranch! 

Students of Iltilal Primary School wait patiently for the grand opening! 

You can read more about the library project, funded entirely by the Charles and Rita Field-Marsham Foundation on our previous blog post here! Most importantly, this library is the first of its' kind for the Foundation, focusing primarily on conservation, wildlife, and the environment - aligning seamlessly with the mission of the Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust!

The library is of stunning construction - beautifully created for the purposes of providing a calming, relaxing, and ideal place for students to expand their knowledge through the use of amazing technologies and materials. The library features a Smart Board (interactive touch screen), two computers with connectivity, plenty of table/chair stations, and beautiful shelves filled with over 2000 brand new books! 

Students and teachers already making use of the new smart board! 

The grand opening event was truly special! Attended by all Iltilal Primary School students, their mothers and fathers, leading community members, staff of MWCT and Campi ya Kanzi, and the Field-Marsham Family. Demonstrations of poetry and traditional dance were enjoyed prior to the official opening.

Iltilal Primary School traditional Maasai dance

The unveiling of the doors, and KEY signature - "Knowledge Empowering Youth"

Below, MWCT President and Chairman, Samson Parshina, and MWCT Founder, Luca Belpietro, share words of appreciation, and  further of encouragement for the students to utilize the library, emphasizing the realization of the distribution of beneficial knowledge for generations to come! 

MWCT Education Coordinator, Titus Muia, opens the ceremony

Across Kuku Group Ranch, 19 primary schools, and 1 secondary school are supported by the Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust - with a total of 7000 students enrolled, 50 certified teachers and 10 support staff employed. The opening of this revolutionary facility at Iltilal Primary School will allow for Education to now blossom even further into the region, providing once-unavailable educational opportunities to thousands of students!

Health Program Update - April Efforts

We apologize, as it has been a while since we have updated on the MWCT Health Program! We can assure you that the team is still working incredibly hard to improve and increase the access to adequate health services across the Group Ranch!

For the month of April, the outreaches continued into the community of Kuku. Two outreaches were held, assisting a total of 82 patients over the two days!

CHV assisting in distributing medication at the Kuku Outreach

On April 27, Sam (an MWCT nurse stationed at the Iltilal Health Centre), organized a supplementary immunization outreach targeting all children less than five years that have not completed their immunization schedule as per the Kenya Expanded Program on Immunization (KEPI). A total of 46 children were immunized on this outreach!

Community Health Volunteers (CHV) have been busy at the Iltilal Health Centre. During the month of April they gathered at the facility to receive new household registers to be orientated on log booking and the procedures of recording household health data in the community.

Iltilal Community Health Volunteers

The Community Health Volunteers in Olorika attended their quarterly forum in April. MWCT organized this forum and lunch for the CHVs, a total of 20 attended the event. Dr. Gabriel addressed the CHVs present on MWCT's aims and goals in environment, conservation, and health promotion.

And finally, in line with the MWCT health goal of supporting the delivery of quality healthcare to the community; 50 doses of intravenous ceftriaxone (broad spectrum antibiotic) and 50 tubes of eye ointment for the treatment of conjunctivities were purchased for the Iltilal Health Centre.

The efforts of the MWCT Health Team are spreading farther and wider everyday! Visit www.maasaiwilderness.org for more information!

Education Program Update - Fulfilling Community Dreams through Education

Improving access to education within the 280 000 acre Kuku Group Ranch and increasing education opportunities and the ability for growth, development, creativity of hundreds of students represents one of the many goals of the Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust.

The exteriors of the brand new library at Iltilal Primary School

Across the Group Ranch, 19 primary schools and 1 secondary school are supported - with a total of 7000 students enrolled, 50 certified teachers, and 10 support staff employed. The launch of a brand new exciting library project at Iltilal Primary School has allowed for education to blossom further into the region. Iltilal Primary School currently has 860 pupils, ranging from nursery school to class 8.

Although its not completely set up yet... it is looking amazing!

This thrilling new project, funded, constructed, and implemented by the Field Marsham Foundation,  is set to have its' grand opening at the beginning of July. The Field Marsham Foundation seeks to communicate the message of "Knowledge Empowering Youth", more specifically by implementing turn-key libraries to schools through their Library Program.

The initial construction of our new library began in October, and it is not approaching its' final steps of completion over the coming months. This library is the first of its' kind for the Field Marsham Foundation. Books were selected carefully and with detail to truly reflect what Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust means. The library is majorly focused on conservation, wildlife, and the environment. Outstanding!

Each library the foundation implements calls for a Library Council. This council is comprised of student representatives from each class from Class 5-8. The Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust has hired a librarian, who will be based at the library full-time.

The library council working alongside Niccola Milnes (Programs Manager for the Field Marsham Foundation)

The library is organized in an "untraditional" way compared to many other libraries. It is organized into categories such as "African Animals, Geography, Children from Different Cultures, Funny" and even resources for the teachers to utilize.

When speaking to the new Library Council whilst they were in the process of labelling a portion of the 2000 brand new books, we asked them what they most excited for when the new library opened - "we will have the opportunity to learn more with all of these books". The horizons will be expanded beyond imaginable with the tremendous resources located within this facility.

Shelves of Knowledge!

 MWCT is extremely excited and thankful about this project. Stay tuned to the blog for more progress on the new library and its' grand opening in July!

Why the Lion Collars?

Recently, Namunyak and her group were around the lava fields close to the Iltilal Village. MWCT Conservation Team is well aware of a regular cattle route passing very close to where her location was. The team sent out the Simba Scouts to go inform these regular herders in the area to herd their livestock away from where Namunyak and her group were. 

Our team wanted to ensure that all precautions were taken to avoid Namunyak and the other lions predating on the livestock, as it may lead to conflict with the community, potentially resulting in a lion hunt. The herders were extremely thankful of this warning from our staff. The Simba Scouts also helped the herders to herd the cows away so that they could graze in a different area where it was safe. 

Many may not truly understand the importance of a lion collar. But this story explains one of the main reasons why they are crucially important. There are many many reasons for collaring a lion, but especially in community land where human-lion conflict is high, it is a very useful tool that can be used to protect the lions. With the collars you can track them and also study their behaviour/movement in relation to human settlements. This information can then be used to mitigate conflict and avoid the lions being killed, such as was done above. Once you understand the behaviour and movement of lions in community land, you can identify high risk areas that herdsmen can avoid. 

Health Program Update - March Efforts

As usual the Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust Health Program team has been working hard. The month of March had them extending their efforts all across Kuku Group Ranch.

The routine health outreaches continued into the month of March, including an outreach to Kuku in which 85 patients were attended to. Further, a new outreach was initiated in the month of March - a mobile laboratory. The MWCT lab technician, whom is permanently stationed at Iltilal Health Center, travelled 25 kilometres away to the Langata Dispensary. Here he managed to do complete prenatal testing for 7 women, as well as a total of 5 tests from the outpatient clinic. The objective of this mobile outreach is to increase the diagnostic capacity of all the health facilities within Kuku, and also increase revenues in order to allow the laboratory to become self-sustained.

As a part of ensuring access and continuity of health services by residents of Kuku Group Ranch, Dr. Gabriel travelled to Langata dispensary and stayed there for 4 days.

The second round of the Tetanus Campaign continued in March. As you may remember, MWCT has partnered with the Ministry of Health to immunize all women of reproductive age. The Iltilal Health Centre Team managed to exceed the set target of 900 women, and immunized a total of 997 women at the end of the campaign!

Lining up for the Tetanus vaccination

Some exciting news about our Community Health Volunteers! The new group of 15 community health volunteers attached to the Iltilal Health Centre completed their 10-day training at the Marla on March 7! Certificates were awarded by the District Medical Office of Health.

New Community Health Workers

Health Program Update - Community Health Workers & Distribution of Sanitary Pads

As part of our Kuku Group Ranch-wide Community Health Worker project, we re-established the community health workers at Iltilal Health Centre. the first meeting with the community hospital committee was held on February 3, and the proposal to enrol the community health workers was passed.

The second meeting was held the following week and the names of the proposed candidates were presented for adoption. A total of 16 community health workers were selected; three of these from the Moilo/Olpusare area. All candidates presented themselves for interviews and briefing on the roles of community health workers. These newly selected CHW's are currently undergoing induction training conducted by the Ministry of Health and sponsored by MWCT.

Meeting with potential community health workers in Iltilal

In the month of February, we also started a rotational CHW forum at the four health facilities within Kuku Group Ranch. This forum brings the community health workers from a particular health centre together for a brief training and joint meal. The purpose of these forums is to foster unity among the CHW's and motivate them towards community health development! They also provide MWCT with a forum to articulate its' health goals for the local community.

The Health Program has a big task this month; thanks for Dr. Michael Brownstein's generous donation, we have been able to distribute reusable cloth sanitary pads to all schoolgirls on Kuku Group Ranch. The objective of the project is to ensure girls are not missing school during menstruation because they do not have the means to purchase sanitary pads. Each girl is given 4 cloth pads (lasting over 1 year), a bar of soap, and a plastic bag to store their pads!

Shokut School Girls

The primary schools in Iltilal, Moilo, Shokut, Marla, Inkisanjani, and Langata were visited this month. We teach them about menstruation, and show them how to use and clean their pads. They were also given to the teachers so that they can assist the children.  

Marlal school girl with cloth sanitary pads

Health Program Update - Polio Campaign & Assisting the Disabled

We've got another Health Update from MWCT Health Director, Lena Koh! Following a successful trachoma campaign in October, the Ministry of Health issued a letter of thanks to MWCT for providing support in the form of health staff and transport.

Shortly after, the MOH launched a polio campaign from November 16-20th. The campaign involved going from house to house providing polio vaccine to children under 5 years of age. MWCT was integral in making the campaign a success.

Health Program Director Lena, giving a vaccination

In fact, in providing transport for the health staff to ensure the essential vaccine reaches children in the most remote areas of Kuku Group Ranch, Iltilal Health Center and Langata Dispensary are the only health facilities in the Loitokitok Region to surpass their target; Iltilal Health Center vaccinated 1401 children. Amazing!

Many children greatly benefitted from the outreaches of this campaign!

Further, a few months ago, during an outreach in Nchalai village with the health staff from Olorika, Dr. Waari treated Mosoni Nkalu, a physically and mentally disable child who was sick. It was noted that the child did not have any medical assistive device, such as a wheelchair.

Mosoni Nkalu at boma in Nchalai

An assessment by the physiotherapist in Loitokitok was required in order to obtain a wheelchair, however, the family could not afford to hire a car to take her there. MWCT brought the physiotherapist to Mosoni's boma so that an assessment could be completed and measurements taken.

Physiotherapist from Loitokitok hospital performing an assessment

We anticipate getting a wheelchair for Mosoni early next year!

Health Program Update - Medical and Education Outreaches

We have some great updates to share with you from our Health Program for the month of October. Medical outreaches continue throughout this month to various villages throughout Kuku Group Ranch.

On October 14, a medical outreach took place in Kuku - 64 patients were seen at this very busy community outreach. A Community Health Worker delivered a talk to those in attendance on family planning. This talk resulted in five clients requesting for contraceptives.

Kuku community health workers dispensing medications

Mothers and babies waiting for immunizations

Also on October 15, Lairumbe presented a talk on female genital cutting to 50 MWCT Rangers. The presentation was well received, with many inquisitive questions and comments from the Rangers.

A busy immunization clinic in Kuku

In light of the recent increase in teenage pregnancies which is a direct result of girls dropping out of school, MWCT has initiated a weekly school education program in Iltilal, as well as a monthly education program in Langata. On October 17, MWCT Health staff visited Iltilal Primary School and spoke to 70 girls in Class 6 and 7 about setting life goals. The next day, staff travelled to Langata Primary School to speak to 150 girls in Class 5, 6, 7, and 8.

School girls at Langata Primary write down their life goals