Community
Community Development and Improving Livelihoods
Since its inception in 1995, Lewa’s mission has remained anchored in wildlife conservation and community development, which are closely linked and interconnected.
Over the last decade, the Lewa Community Programme has implemented initiatives such as:
Water development
58,000+
people with improved access to clean water
Women’s microenterprise
1,900+
women accessed microloans
Accessible healthcare services
87,000+
community members reached
Community forest management and agricultural extension initiatives
1,000
farmers had soil tested
Healthcare for Vulnerable Rural Communities
For thousands of Kenyans in rural areas, access to quality health-care services is a challenge. By providing support to the government and county health services by integrating public health into our conservation model, Lewa Wildlife Conservancy is recognised as a critical contributor to Kenya’s development goals. By investing in the communities’ well-being, Lewa is able to achieve a holistic conservation impact.
The Lewa Wildlife Conservancy’s healthcare programme has achieved tremendous infrastructural and service delivery growth, with Lewa Clinic, Leparua Clinic, and Ngare Ndare Clinic remaining the service delivery points for the programme. Services range from child welfare clinics to reproductive health clinics, HIV/AIDS management, counseling, and nutritional health clinics, as well as treatment for the sick and injured. This has led to increasing confidence levels among the members of the community and staff in light of improved services and modern laboratory equipment, significantly enhancing the diagnosis and management of medical cases.
Women’s Economic Empowerment
In rural Kenya, women are less likely to have formal financial accounts through which they can access loans and establish savings. While the majority of women are small-scale farmers, what they produce is usually only for household use. In addition, many hours are spent walking long distances to collect water and firewood, depriving women of the option to make worthwhile and long-term investments. Through microcredit, women are able to launch their own small businesses and become entrepreneurs in agriculture, livestock rearing, and the running of community provision stores and small shops.In 2001, we launched the Women’s Micro-Enterprise (WME) programme with the first credit rolling out in 2003. We have expanded the reach of the programme with major support from the Women’s Microfinance Initiative (WMI), a US-based non-profit providing financial inclusion for rural women in East Africa (wmionline.org), and KIVA (kiva.org), an international nonprofit, founded in 2005 in San Francisco. Aside from receiving capital and training, women also learn the importance of environmental preservation and wildlife protection.
Lewa has been accelerating the potential of women through:
- Access to microloans to jumpstart small businesses. Using these loans, they are able to start small businesses such as retail shops, butcheries, flour mills, dressmaking and tailoring, poultry rearing, and buying and selling cereals and livestock. Women form groups to ensure collective borrowing, which helps guarantee higher repayment rates.
- Business education and skills training. Lewa provides women entrepreneurs with the support they need through experiential training. This involves visits to other microbusinesses in the area and a two-week business-management training.
Food security and improved farming practices
For most rural farmers in Kenya, lack of access to quality agricultural training tools and knowledge prevents them from achieving improved crop yields and more sustainable farming incomes. Lewa works closely with farmers, empowering them with better tools and an understanding of eco-friendly practises that include proper water harvesting, sustainable water usage, and the importance of protecting water catchment areas. Community empowerment is the most sustainable path to conservation success, and Lewa supports farmers to maximise production while minimising any negative impacts on the wider ecosystem.
This includes:
- Hands-on training: Lewa works with local farmers to share techniques that preserve soil quality and prevent land degradation.
- Eco-friendly farming practices: We support local communities in adopting environmentally sound agricultural practices. Lewa has developed training programmes on crop diversification, water harvesting, irrigation methods, and crop monitoring.
- Diversified farming: Our Community Development Team encourages the cultivation of alternative crops besides wheat, maize, and beans to enhance the competitiveness of the farmers’ produce. We are working to identify new markets and help the farmers reap maximum rewards.
- Improved access to markets: The team works hand in hand with farmers to improve fragmented and disintegrated agricultural production and marketing strategies, which can enable farmers better access to markets and higher returns for their produce.
Resilience, adaptation, and innovation for the future
Climate change is affecting Kenya’s biodiversity. One of the greatest challenges that endangered species face is the loss of their natural habitat, with key drivers being forest degradation, the development of agricultural land, and rapid population growth. Ultimately, losing forest cover will also exacerbate the negative effects on Kenya’s flora and fauna.
Climate change vulnerability remains a serious threat to poverty alleviation and environment programmes in the areas where Lewa operates, making it a high organisational priority and strategic focus. Lewa works closely with our neighbours to protect the forest cover found in our ecosystem by supporting and strengthening community forest associations to ensure that they remain robust, community-driven institutions that spearhead the protection and management of forests.
Tree nurseries:
The tree nurseries produce approximately 6,000 seedlings per year, which are planted throughout the conservancy grounds or sold to small-scale farmers at a discounted price.
Carbon financing:
Working closely with the Northern Rangelands Trust, Lewa will embark on sustainable carbon financing projects to help mitigate climate risks and enhance climate resilience and adaptability.
Creating access, equity and conservation of water to rural communities
Access to water is key to promoting resilient communities and livelihoods. Sustainable management of water supply for our communities for drinking, domestic, and livestock use is critical towards ensuring robust economic and social growth. We have built dams and water storage tanks across the majority of our neighbouring areas. We have also assisted farmers in setting up irrigation schemes to support stronger conservation agriculture practices, as well as providing communities with consistent access to water resources.
Water projects: Lewa has built 11 water projects, including dams, boreholes, and water tanks in the neighbouring communities to support the provision of water to approximately 20,000 people. This includes carrying out regular maintenance and upgrades on the projects to ensure that they continue to work efficiently for the communities they sustain
“Close to 90 percent of Lewa’s community projects – be it in women, health, education, or agriculture- are in Meru County. We have especially invested in providing water in villages within a 10-kilometre radius of Lewa. We either dig boreholes that feed into water kiosks or gravity-feed individual homes from the Ngare Ndare water tower. You can provide people with everything else, but if they don’t have water, nothing else makes sense. For example, the women who benefit from the microcredit programme will not be able to farm or do any other business as most of their time will be spent looking for water. This is why water is one of our biggest capital investments in the community, only closely rivalled by health and education.
– Purity Mwenda, Community Development Administrator.
Lewa is uniquely positioned to test and refine innovative interventions in community-based conservation.
