Community

Empowering The People Through Water Access

Access to clean water is a vital necessity, particularly for women in local villages who spend hours daily fetching water for their families. By supporting the drilling of water wells, we help reduce this burden, allowing women more time to engage in productive activities such as sports, cultural activities crafting, farming, and supporting their children’s education. Our projects also create employment opportunities for men and women from the local villages in lodges, empowering them with skills and an income to improve their quality of life.

Supporting Communities through Travel

At Marula African Adventures, we believe in the power of travel to make a positive impact. Our African adventures offer more than just stunning landscapes and thrilling wildlife encounters; they provide opportunities to engage with local communities, support sustainable development, and foster cross-cultural understanding. Our guests have contributed generously to various community projects, creating lasting benefits for the people living near our tourism lodges. Join us in making a difference while experiencing the magic of Africa.

There are opportunities to meet the local people from the villages and schools and experience their culture.

Our many generous guests continue to support our local projects when they return from their African trip. The people living in villages closest to the tourism lodges have had tourists come and visit their village or school, speak English, buy local crafts, inspire children, donate supplies. These interactions have generated benefits for the local people and have helped them to better understand and appreciate the benefits of wildlife that helps attract tourists to their areas. Benefits go beyond tourist visits and extend into philanthropy with support going towards a number of community development projects, including one of the most important programs, that of drilling water wells.

Community Rhino Conservation Initiative

Launched in May 2022, the Community Rhino Conservation Initiative (CRCI) introduces southern white rhinos to communal lands in Zimbabwe, a historic first. This project, located along the southern boundary of Hwange National Park, enables local people to engage directly with conservation efforts. Tourism generated by rhino viewing provides funds for community development, education, and employment. Forty percent of the fees go back to the community, with the rest supporting conservation projects, ensuring sustainable benefits for all.

Wildlife conservation is often promoted by a few stakeholders and in isolation from other conservation efforts, including that of local and cultural heritage, and of social development efforts. In a rural part of North West Zimbabwe, an innovative project is radically shifting the business-as-usual conservation model; The Community Rhino Conservation Initiative (CRCI) is using tourism to empower community-based conservation and local socio-economic development by putting the local people at the heart of conservation action. CRCI, born out of ecotourism, aims to pioneer a replicable and scalable model of wildlife conservation with exponential benefits for local communities ; a way of tackling global issues like poverty and biodiversity loss by aligning wildlife and people rather than putting them against each other.

The Community Rhino Conservation Initiative (CRCI) was launched in May 2022, with, for the first time in history, the introduction of two southern white rhinos on communal land in Zimbabwe. CRCI has been set up along the southern boundary of Hwange National Park on communal land (Tsholotsho Rural District), something that is, given the local context, just shy of extraordinary.

CRCI a culmination of decades of work. CRCI is enabling local people to directly engage with conservation and their natural heritage by having rhinos on their own land and directly benefiting from the tourism that these two rhinos attract. These rhinos on communal land benefit local communities via 1) direct funds from tourist rhino viewing fees 2) education, employment and infrastructure opportunities and 3) more tourists and therefore opportunities for philanthropy. Forty percent of rhino viewing fees go back to a community fund, for them to spend as they see fit. The remaining 60% is used to maintain the existing project, including salaries for over 40 scouts and 20 other workers, as well as to expand the projects into further conservation phases.

Continuing Community Projects

Our guests’ generosity has supported numerous community projects, ranging from health clinics and soccer academies to educational facilities and water boreholes. These initiatives have provided essential resources and infrastructure, benefiting local communities in various ways.

By traveling with us, you contribute to these ongoing efforts, helping to create a brighter future for the communities we visit.

: just a few of the projects our guests have supported….

Projects include dormitory construction, school supplies, clothing donations, rhino conservation program, health clinic, soccer academy, educational classroom, classroom furniture, dormitory furniture, weed wackers, t-shirts, bore holes, school uniforms, school fees, school lunches, sponsored children, soccer balls and jerseys, shoes, bleachers, fencing, just to name a few