We just returned from spending almost 6 weeks in Africa, working to teach children the importance of African wildlife to their heritage, and to their future. It was an inspiring, memorable trip and we wanted to send you a short note to thank you for helping to make this trip possible. How? The support and friendship of all our friends, has always been a source of strength and inspiration for us. Our moments of shared laughter, kinship, and adventure help us get through the challenges we face in Africa and, over the years, have enriched our lives beyond measure. So although you may not realize it, your friendship and the energy and the support it generates in our lives, has been integral to our success! We want you to know that in a significant way, you also share these accomplishments. Although Anne and I arranged the main tickets to Africa ourselves, your friendship and energy helped us reach our partners in Zimbabwe and South Africa with Art supplies, teaching aids, artwork, Wildlife Protector Program elements, and Wildlife Protector wristbands.
We were able to train staff members and even develop some new inspirational conservation programs at Global Conservation Corps, Seeds of Light Foundation, Bush Babies Foundation, Timbavati Foundation and Painted Dog Conservation. These programs reach thousands of children with environmental education each year.
Working with Children in the Wilderness, we developed a new program which recognizes local children at Eco-clubs across Zimbabwe. South Africa, and Zambia as "Conservation Heroes". Together with our partners in Africa, these new programs will help about 2000 more kids each year learn more about the importance of wildlife conservation ,while offering them opportunities to develop their own personal wildlife conservation future.
As Arts for Animals grows, we and you indirectly, are touching the lives of almost 5000 children each year.
Thanks to your help, all those children are developing their own conservation stewardship skills and becoming more aware of the importance of their wildlife. These children are the adults that will shape Conservation policies all over Africa in the future.
One of the side benefits of connecting creativity with Conservation is being able to identify and mentor young artists, as well as expanding the creativity and creative thinking of all the children we reach. A good example of this process was a young naturally talented artist, named Thembelani ,whom we met at Mosi oa Tunya ("Smoke that Thunders") high school, one of the largest schools in Zimbabwe. He was 16 when we met him, and had designed and drawn his own anti-poaching poster.(Below) With Anne's mentoring and our continuing support of the schools art programs, he is now a 20-year-old professional artist.
We arrived in Johannesburg, exhausted from the 22 hour trip carrying 10 suitcases of art for animals, program materials, art supplies, wristbands, etc. . As always, we stayed in Johannesburg with our friends at the Africa rock Hotel. The owners, Otti and Zelda are old friends and have been incredibly generous supporters of arts for animals for more than a decade. The Africa Rock is a perfect base of operations for us since it is safe, comfortable, and the staff provides us with transportation, secure materials storage, shipping assistance, meals, and moral support. They help take care of us when we are sick, help us ship Arts for Animals supplies around Africa, and provide valuable office and business assistance as needed.
While there, we met with our friend Lindy new house from Wilderness Safaris. After years of carrying thousands of posters along with us from America, or printing them in Zimbabwe at a premium cost, she volunteered to arrange for us to use the Wilderness Safaris commercial printer to print our posters. So we worked out the details on the specific editions of posters we needed for our partners in Zimbabwe and South Africa, and had thousands printed up in South Africa at a greatly reduced price. After figuring out how to ship them up to Zimbabwe and across South Africa, we were elated to have finally worked out the most cost-efficient way to get thousands of posters to our friends across southern Africa.
After flying up to Vic Falls in Zimbabwe, we spent the next few days meeting with the staff of our partners like Painted Dog Conservation, children in the wilderness, and the Mosi Oa Tunya high school administrator.
Several years ago, we had renovated the Arts and crafts room at the high school, so that would be much more inspiring and motivational for the art students. And we began adding components to the educational messages and posters on the wall to raise the focus of Conservation by connecting creativity in the room with Conservation messages. The headmaster of the school was an artist himself, and also through our discussions came to realize the importance of Conservation in curriculums today. With his support, we updated the old arts and crafts room to the Arts and Conservation center now. With some new paint, posters, inspirational messages, and ARTS AND CONSERVATION signs the has taken on it's a new persona connecting creativity with Conservation in a stronger way than ever before. This makes it a perfect meeting place for the children and the Wilderness Eco club at the high school.
Jim and I had designed new posters for the room, focusing on well known "African Wildlife Heroes" and, working with the staff of Children in the Wilderness, worked out the details for a new program, enabling students and "eco club" members to compete each month to be the monthly "Wildlife Hero" of the high school.
Each month, a new student Wildlife Hero will be added to the list of well-known Wildlife Heroes for that month and at the end of the year, the an annual "Wildlife Hero" award will be given to the best student Wildlife Hero, as voted by the eco club staff. We are working on designing special pins and awards to recognize these student wildlife heroes.
We met with Wilton Wsimanago, director of Painted Dog Conservation to share these ideas and deliver another two years worth of posters, wildlife protector, wristbands, used I pads,and art supplies.
We did some mentoring with with Thembelani and Descent, and some of our other young artists and delivered new brushes, canvas, and art supplies to help them continue to grow in the art business. In return, they work at the high school and at the Arts for Animals Wildlife Conservation Center mentoring other young artists and helping them develop their artistic talents as well.
We spent a lot of time with our Wildlife Art Center director, Tich Ncubez working out details on the new arch and Conservation room and constructing signage and program elements.
While we were there, we also met with Lamisha, the young girl who our friend Sarah Mock, has helped support since early childhood. She is 11 now and growing into a young lady. Since her passion these days is volleyball, we constructed a volleyball court at the orphanage and delivered coloring books, art supplies, and kazoos to the other kids at the orphanage.
Our old friend Steve Bolnick, invited us to spend a couple of days at his lodge on the Zambezi river in Mana pools national Park if we could cover the 900 miles from Victoria Falls to Mana Pools. Thanks to our ongoing partnership with Children in the Wilderness, they were able to arrange for us to hitch a ride with another Wilderness Air Charter already scheduled to fly up to Mana Pools at no charge, saving us hundreds of dollars. Wilderness Air is a subsidy business of Wilderness Destinations , just as Children in the Wilderness is.
Wilderness Destinations is one of the oldest, and most successful Safari operators in Africa. They operate lodges all over the African continent and devote special staff and organizations, to raising the educational levels and conservation stewardship of villages near their lodges. For the past 15 years, we have been escorting friends to Wilderness Destinations lodges across South Africa, Rwanda, Botswana, and Zimbabwe and our relationship with them, and Children in the Wilderness is really what has made arts for animals as success. Without the help of Children in the Wilderness staff like Sue Goatley ,and Cynthia ____________, there is no way we could administrate the scholarships, art programs, young artists, and Wildlife Art and Conservation Center in Zimbabwe. They really are our "boots on the ground" in Zimbabwe and we are incredibly thankful for their support.
Anyway, we had a great couple of nights with Steve Bolnick at his " Camp Mana". We saw tons of animals, interacted with lions and elephants in our camp, and spent most of our time with Steve on walking Safaris to learn more about African wildlife. Camp Mana is not a luxury camp, but it's quite comfortable and we can't tell you how much we enjoy. Just spending time with our old friends Steve and Debbie who run the camp.
The other high point of our training trip to Zimbabwe this year was going back to Victoria Falls ( the actual "falls"). Although we have visited Victoria Falls, the town, dozens of times over the last 15 years, our focus had changed from sightseeing around Victoria Falls, to working with our partners and getting things done.
For the last eight or nine years, we have not taken the time to go visit one of the most inspiring wonders of the planet of earth. I remembered the last time we left I was craneing my neck out of the plane window as we departed, just to see a view of the falls from the air and realized it had been years since we have gotten to experience Victoria Falls. So, after working at the Wildlife Center one day, we made a late visit around four in the afternoon to visit Victoria Falls. Since it was close to closing time, there was really very few other people there, but the sun was in the perfect position to create double rainbows everywhere you looked. We had forgotten how awesome that almost 1 mile of water falling 300 feet into the chasm below can be. It was breathtaking and definitely one of the most beautiful places on the planet Earth.
After spending several more days at Mosi high school and working at our Wildlife center, we flew back to Johannesburg to gather more art supplies, wristbands, and artwork for our South African partners. We had stashed six more suitcases full of arts for animals program materials at the Africa rock and, after repacking, and getting over a 24 hour flu, we must've picked up at the orphanage, we flew onto Hoedsprit, the nearest town to Kruger national Park, and our base of operations for visiting our partners in the area . We stayed at the Dreamcatcher which was a lovely little bed-and-breakfast in a residential area that was within a wildlife sanctuary. So we had baboons, giraffe, eland ,waterbuck and warthogs around our rooms every day. They even had several leopards patrolling the area, so pet owners had to be very careful. The owner, was very friendly and supportive of our work and we really enjoyed getting to spend time with her and get to know her during breakfast and sometime in the evenings when she would put out a plate of bananas to feed the wild " bush babies".
We were exhausted after working in Zimbabwe for three weeks and trying to get over that 24 hour flu we had caught, so we spent that afternoon resting and trying to get well and the next morning woke up feeling a little better. That day was a holiday, called, "Africa day" and, since no one was working that day, in the afternoon our old friend, Karin, took us for a little relaxation trip to the Blyde River Canyon. It's the third largest canyon in the world and the largest green Canyon in the world. We joined a tour group in a boat and got to see lots of crocodiles, birdlife, and the majestic mountains surrounding the canyon. This was a little scary, getting on that boat because we still both had some serious intestinal problems from that flu we caught at the orphanage. Luckily, we were on the mend, and no "emergencies." developed while on the boat.
The next day we started bright and early meeting with Matt Lindenberg, the director of global Conservation Corps and his staff. What a lovely bunch of motivated individuals dedicated to creating conservation opportunities as rangers and Conservation heroes to the kids in South Africa. We met at their training office at the "NOURISH" educational campus. Nourish is a facility we visited several years ago when it was first starting and developing its facilities to educate preschoolers, introduce older children to computers and the Internet, and provide a place where locals can learn how to build anything using recycled materials.
Another important goal of Nourish is to train local girls to make and use special sanitary napkins made out of scrap cloth. This is a huge problem in Africa since young girls are not educated about their bodies and there is a certain amount of ignorance and shame associated with female menstruation. When we visited nourish several years ago, it was amazing what they had done using all old shipping containers, Tires, plastic items, and other things that have been thrown away or discarded-all with almost no budget and only using hard work and recycled materials to build their campus. Last year, Nourish was adopted by a large German construction company, and the owner brought down a crew of men, machinery, and enough shipping containers to rebuild, renovate, and expand the facilities at Nourish. It really is a beautiful place, dedicated to recycling, conservation, education, and sustainable, gardening, and crafts.. They have air conditioned training rooms and even a small café on the campus so we had a perfect venue for Training the staff at Global Conservation Corps.
Global conservation Corps reaches several hundred children each year and has developed online training programs directed toward Conservation careers and a very comprehensive, step-by-step, grade by grade path for young Conservation minded students to follow, ultimately leading to a career as a ranger or Conservation hero.
After training the staff all morning and going over how to connect Conservation with creativity using our program materials in their programs, we went to Beretta School so that the staff could practice what they learned that morning. The students there were hilarious, and so happy to learn about art, and creativity. Each member of the staff practice giving the wildlife protector, pledge, leading the students in a drawing lesson, and interjecting Conservation stewardship messages into the Art discussions. Afterward, we had a lovely lunch at one of the staff members homes where we got to know the staff better, played music on Kazoos, and enjoyed lots of one-on-one fellowship.
After spending two days with them, we transferred three hours over to the headquarters and community facilities of Seeds of Light. You might remember that seeds of light focuses on expanding the educational opportunities and career choices of young women. Since they already have a presence in local high schools in the area, we introduced them to our program materials which they can use to not only influence young girls, but also educate all the children they reach with Conservation messages. Thanks to our arts for animals programs, they now have a active conservation component to their already very accomplished art programs.
The next day I returned to their art facility and mentor a group of young girls who had each expressed an interest for drawing and art. It was so wonderful to see the excitement and an interest in learning more about art techniques and drawing. I love working with kids like this that are so motivated and funny.
Over the next several days we worked with Timbavati Foundation staff at their new interactive Terrestrial Wildlife Facility near Kruger Park. Jim and I have been very excited about helping to build the first aquatic life interactive educational facility in South Africa. Candice Pierce and the boardmembers at Timbavati understand that to clean up the oceans, we are first going to have to educate the people living on the rivers and streams that flow into the ocean. It's an exciting and strange new world for these Africans and there is a great deal of curiosity and interest in what the children will get exposed to at this new aquatic wildlife facility. Jim had developed a new poster for the aquatic wildlife facility, very much like the one he did for our other programs except this one focusing on African aquatic life, and so we began educating the staff there about the Oceans and marine life. Of course, helping this groundbreaking facility is very exciting for Jim. As an oceanographer for most of his life, this is giving him a chance to use some of his experiences teaching marine life information and knowledge again. Using his background working at the Aquarium of the Americas in New Orleans and in schools in Central America, he has been instrumental in developing the exhibits at the aquatic life facility.
This facility is being built, and the exhibits developed with the help of the Two Oceans Aquarium in Cape Town and also with support from our friends at Diver's Supply Inc. in New Orleans. The Two Oceans Aquarium is an established Marine Educational facility, and they are very enthusiastic about developing this satellite facility 500 miles from the ocean, on the Zambezi river-where it is needed most..
Divers Supply Inc. in New Orleans has grown to be one of the largest and most comprehensive suppliers and manufacturers of undersea diving equipment in the United States. The Mistretta family, who founded and operates Diver's Supply Inc., recognizes the challenges our oceans are experiencing these days and want to do all they can to preserve our ocean environments for the future. This is the first such facility in Africa, and together we hope that it will encourage similar facilities to develop on rivers and waterways throughout Africa and the world.
After meeting with the staff from our partner organizations, teaching at several schools, and leading training exercises at several schools we flew back to Johannesburg, exhausted, but excited about the work that will now continue after we leave.
Only three weeks after we arrived home, we packed the sprinter and headed out west for six weeks to deliver artwork, draw, bears and wolves, and try to find some time to hike, bicycle, and re-energize. Three weeks after returning from that, we left for Malaysia and indonesia, and so we are still working on adding information and captions to all the photographs below. We hope to have all of those photographs captioned and full of insights about our trip between now and Christmas. Please keep in mind that it's your support that has made all this possible and rest assured we are working hard to ensure that our partners have all they need to continue connecting creativity with Conservation until we can return.
