Nawiri Group announces initiatives to further strengthen Southern Tanzania natural ecosystems

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Apr 19, 2023, 11:25 ET

NAIROBI, Kenya, April 19, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Nawiri Group is proud to announce a range of concrete initiatives and collaborations to support communities in and around Ruaha in Southern Tanzania. Over the course of the next 12-18 months Nawiri, through its foundation, and partner Six Rivers Africa, will invest significant resources into various education and training initiatives.

Nawiri is partnering with the Kamitei Foundation to support primary education for over 13,000 students in 18 communities along the boundaries of the Ruaha. An initial project to provision primary schools with missing school supplies for students, is the first step in building relationships with the schools for more intensive and long-term structural support. Investments in primary school education contribute to expanded opportunities for members of these communities.

In addition to partnering with communities to support primary school education, Nawiri Group together with Six Rivers Africa, will provide scholarships to ~100 learners from the surrounding communities to attend vocational training at VETA institutions across the country. Vocational training is an effective way of enhancing employment prospects of students, bringing the benefits of formal employment back to communities. Importantly, these scholarships for vocational training are not limited to tourism, ensuring that a diverse array of talents is nurtured.

Through a third, major initiative these same partners will build a Wildlife Training College for Southern Tanzania that will train students for jobs in tourism including, amongst other, as guides, camp management, and catering staff, with two annual intakes of initially ~50 students from the communities around the Ruaha and Nyerere/Selous ecosystems. The investment into the Wildlife Tourism College follows the launch of the Wildlife Tourism College of Maasai Mara which opened in August 2022, part funded by some of Nawiri Group's investors and supported by Nawiri Group and other tourism partners.

These initiatives are part of a broader multi-year vision of Nawiri Group and its partners to improve the prospects of the greater Selous and Ruaha ecosystems and the local communities in these areas. The greater Ruaha (covering ~45,000 Km2) and the greater Nyerere/Selous ecosystems (~51,000 Km2) – together approximately the size of Portugal – are a vital source of biodiversity but also under threat.

As part of the overall ambition to strengthen the nature-positive income streams for the Greater Ruaha and Selous ecosystems, Nawiri Group has entered into a partnership with ATR Safari, the UK owner-operated Safari specialist, to ensure their continued success in bringing tourism into Southern Tanzania during the coming years.

ATR has been a leading promoter of Southern Tanzania through high value, low volume, immersive travel during the past 15 years. Having been at the forefront of introducing international leisure travellers to unique, off-the-beaten-track nature-based travel destinations in Africa of which the Ruaha and Selous are prime examples, they - like many specialist operators on whom regions like these depend – have gone through an exceptionally challenging period throughout the COVID pandemic. This partnership includes a minority interest, in order to provide financial stability to ATR towards continuing to internationally market exceptional travel experiences into these regions, regions for which each incremental traveller truly makes a meaningful contribution to the prospects of the natural ecosystem and the local communities who depend on it.

This comprehensive approach to strengthening the natural ecosystems of Southern Tanzania and the local communities is part of Nawiri Group's Impact-At-Scale strategy, combining mutually supportive commercial and positive impact initiatives, to create various nature-positive income streams for some of Africa's most important natural ecosystems, and the people whose livelihoods depend on them. This vision is backed by decades of experience working in the region together with communities, partners, governments, and NGOs.

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SOURCE Nawiri Group