Bones Keakabetse

According to Moalosi Lebekwe, stakeholder relations manager at Wilderness Safaris, his organization is helping local communities deal with the severe drought by providing food hampers.

In the Okavango eastern panhandle, Wilderness has just finished delivering 350 food hampers to the villages of Seronga, Gunotsoga, Eretsha, Beetsha, and Gudigwa, where they do business with the Okavango Community Trust. This grant benefited Sankoyo village as well.

“The food donation is part of our efforts to help communities where we operate deal with the effects of the drought,” Lebekwe said.

The majority of farmers were unable to obtain enough produce to support themselves. From November through January, Wilderness promised to assist the villages on a monthly basis. The program is a component of Wilderness’s three-pillared impact strategy: empower, educate, and protect in which assisting the communities in which they operate is the goal,

Eretsha Primary School classroom block construction is one of the initiatives associated with this effort. The project, which cost P 1.9 million, also included building a fence for the school.

Additionally, they have also provided funding for the purchase of milling machines and a milling facility for women in Beetsha. The absence of milling facilities in the area, which gets worse during major community events like weddings and funerals, served as the impetus for the initiative according to Lebekwe.

Additionally, six boreholes were been given to the locals by Wilderness. The purpose of these boreholes is to stop the ongoing conflicts between people and wildlife. It was discovered that several elderly were assaulted by elephants while returning to their fields in search of water. In order to lessen the number of human-wildlife clashes, Wilderness drilled the solar-powered boreholes nearer to the plowing fields.

Lebekwe further reaffirmed that Children in the Wilderness (CITW), another program run by Wilderness, aims to empower adolescents in the five villages where they work to promote sustainable conservation through leadership.