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In total, Wildlife Works today provides 56 jobs to the local community, with 100% health insurance to the employees and their families, and wages many times the average annual income in Kenya.

 
New classrooms
Using a grant from the Dutch government and sweat equity from local parents, Wildlife Works built 18 new classrooms for primary school children, who had no books, no desks and often dilapidated classrooms, if any at all.

Our carpenter, Nicholas Ndau, single-handedly built 300 new student desks to furnish the classrooms, and we purchased more than 1000 essential textbooks. We also created a clean water supply for some of the schools using an innovative rainwater catchment system and manual rower pump to allow the children to retrieve the water from underground storage tanks.

Before these changes, children in the community had given up on ever being able to go to high school. The year after we built the schools, two students passed their national high school entrance exams and we found them donors to pay their high school tuition fees. These two students - and the fact they made it to high school - have become an inspiration to other students.

Every year, more children are passing their exams, and we are continually looking for ways via generous donors to raise the money they need to go on to high school.

Community outreach
When Wildlife Works came to this region of Kenya, we were met with some apprehension. The local community had seen numerous aid organizations come and go with short-term financial handouts and unfulfilled promises, and it would take time for them to see that Wildlife Works was a different animal and had come to stay.

Most of all, we needed to earn their trust.

When it came time to move the squatters off Rukinga, we worked closely with the community to form a land cooperative, and sold 5,000 acres of land known as Sasenyi Valley to the cooperative.

It was the best of all possible outcomes. The newly formed Sasenyi Valley Land Cooperative gave each of the former squatters who participated legal rights to 10 acres of land outside of the critical wildlife corridor, and Rukinga was intact once again, with secure boundaries and no human encroachment.

Putting Chili Peppers to Good Use
Did you know elephants loathe chili pepper oils? Wildlife Works is teaching local farmers in Kenya how to put this knowledge to good use.

By surrounding vulnerable crops with tightly packed rows - or fences - of chili pepper bushes, farmers can prevent elephants from raiding their fields. It's an innovative idea, and it offers an appealing alternative to other methods, such as electric fences.

It also gives farmers another cash crop, as Wildlife Works will buy and distribute the organic chili peppers through a local supermarket chain if the farmers are unable to find a buyer.