Tanzania luxury family safari and beach holiday

Planet

The Elewana Collection has made considerable efforts to reduce its carbon footprint on the environment around us. We strongly believe in the power of conservation and do our best to promote this with the communities we work with, our teams and of course our guests. Elewana’s environmental and social philosophy gently weaves itself through your safari experience with us.

All of Elewana’s camps and lodges have been designed to have as little impact as possible on their surrounds. Many of our camps employ state-of-the-art power systems, with solar and power-storage technology to ensure minimal emissions and fuel use.

All camps and lodges employ strict recycling systems, ensuring that all recyclable waste is just that- recycled! In Tanzania, this includes sending glass waste to the Shanga workshop in Arusha, where disadvantaged Tanzanians turn the glass into amazing works of art.

Elewana has significantly reduced our single use plastic waste. In 2018, we implemented the ‘Ban the bottle’ initiative. Each guest receives a branded Elewana aluminium reusable bottle that they can fill up at filling points within the property, thus eliminating our use of plastic water bottles. Historically, when reusable bottles were introduced to six of Elewana’s camps in Kenya, this was shown to prevent over 160’000 non-biodegradable plastic bottles a year from ending up in landfills. At the beginning of 2019, we were the first in East Africa to eliminate the use of plastic straws. We now offer biodegradable paper straws and encourage guests to go to ‘War with the straw’.

Many of our camps, particularly those based in community conservancies, employ approximately 50-75% of its staff from the local community ensuring many families, who were previously reliant on only livestock and agriculture, enjoy a steady income.

And wherever possible, food and supplies are sourced locally to ensure the surrounding communities feel the benefits of tourism on a commerce level. So enjoy that delicious lunch-time salad, knowing the vegetables come from a local farmer!

People

The Land & Life Foundation is the charitable face of Elewana and Cheli & Peacock Safaris. Working with communities and conservation projects in the areas surrounding Elewana’s properties, the Land & Life Foundation supports local people and preserves the wildlife and habitats of these important landscapes. With all operational costs covered by Elewana, 100% of every single donation goes straight to benefiting the communities, schools and wildlife in the areas where we work.

Passion for wildlife conservation cannot exist without knowledge about wildlife. The Land & Life Foundation continues the commitment to educate the next generation of conservationists, to build a passion for wildlife in East Africa’s key conservation areas and to inspire the communities we work with to conserve East Africa’s wildlife for generations to come. The Wildlife Warrior Program currently includes up to 2,200 children across Kenya and Tanzania. Our termly Wildlife Warrior Club activities include trivia, poetry, drama, art and story writing competitions, and all are designed to promote inter-generational knowledge sharing, innovative thinking and proactive wildlife conservation.

By 2018 up to 40 of our best young conservationists from the program to date will have been awarded with Wildlife Warrior Scholarships for the rest of their primary and secondary schooling, thanks to the generosity of our donors. Our aim is to raise enough funds to increase our scholarship base by a minimum of 10 new scholars each year.

CLINIC & SCHOOL SUPPORT
Elewana strongly believes that providing tangible benefits to communities living around protected areas is paramount to the sustainability of East Africa’s wildlife and habitats. Most of these rural communities have access to poor education and health services, typically characterised by lack of supplies and facilities as well as stretched workforces with inadequate skills. The Land & Life Foundation works closely with schools and clinics to tackle these issues by helping to identify their development priorities and raise funds from travelling philanthropists to finance their requests, whether for supplies, infrastructure or training.

In the past 5 years, we have provided free healthcare to over 1,285 patients, as well as trained clinicians from 5 clinics across Kenya, serving nearly 40,000 people. We also support primary schools near Elewana properties in Kenya and Tanzania, to which we have donated well over $300,000 in stationary supplies, books, desks, sports equipment and kits, uniforms, classrooms, kitchens, drought-relief food provisions and scholarships over the past 5 years, all thanks to the generosity of our guests.

Every year, the Lewa Education Programme enrols high-performing students from neighbouring primary schools and supports them throughout their secondary education via sponsorship and mentorship. Over the past five years, the number of students attaining the university pass-mark has been increasing with each graduating class, from 13% in 2018, 21% in 2019, and 48% for the class of 2020, making it a record-breaking year for securing better futures for local children.