The Way Forward

The Way Forward

Greetings!

The pandemic has its impact everywhere. In Tanzania and Kenya, home to some of the best wildlife viewing sites in the world, tourism has stopped. This has a major economic impact. Read below to learn how our tourism partnership continues.

With Projects like ours, we get a lot of things started. We also know that we have to stick with the people, learning together, advising, and we never just launch something and then disappear. Read below to see how the Widows Groups are becoming an integrated part of life in the region.

We're proud to introduce you to fellow supporter Dr. Martin Carnoy who has been a friend to the Project since the beginning.

We couldn't proceed without the support of people like you and Martin. We extend our deepest appreciation. Thank you.

With faith in the future and the way forward,

Twende!

Robert Lange

September 2020

On safari with G Adventures

Tourism and the ICSEE

Fortunately, the Maasai women of the ICSEE do not depend directly on tourist money, unlike those Maasai whose primary income derives from tourism-related business.

For many years we’ve had a wonderful relationship with G Adventures, a travel company that partners with us to bring special experiences to their clients. Rather than the typical tourist show, their visitors see Maasai women working to make life better. Their tourists come to bomas where members of the Maasai Stoves & Solar Installation Team are actively installing stoves.

With tourism at a standstill, Planeterra Foundation, a G Adventures affiliate, has reached out to G Adventures partners all over the world to help them get through the difficulties of the pandemic.

In our case, the funds from G Adventures go to the women of the Maasai villages who install stoves with the tourists when they are visiting. Even in their absence, the ICSEE and Planeterra felt it would be a good thing for the stove installers to continue their work. It is a salute to G Adventures and their support and continues some earnings for the women.

Thank you to the Foundation for their donation that allows us to continue with stove installations along the tourist path. We are very happy to be improving houses in honor of this sustained and loving relationship between organizations.

Maasai Stoves & Solar Installation Team members at work

Cows or Goats?

It is a great pleasure to see that projects initiated by the ICSEE continue on to become an integrated part of the lives of the people. As the projects evolve, the challenges, issues, and decisions to make, along with the benefits, all belong to the people.

The eleven ICSEE Widow’s groups, organized in collaboration with the Global Fund for Widows, is a wonderful example.

These organizations, important as businesses and socially as well, are maturing. Their success depends on planning according to real conditions, and the women have to make good decisions.

All eleven of the groups have now sold their goats, fattened through the abundant grass from the long rainy season. It is now time to decide on the next stage of their collective businesses.

Goats or cows? The choice is up to the widows

Fattening goats as a business has its advantages and disadvantages. Goats are not expensive, starting out at about $20 each and can easily double in price when fattened. But they also are prone to respiratory illness and in the cold and wet rainy season some sicken and die.

Cattle are less prone to disease, but they are expensive, and values fluctuate more widely. But that is life, and Mesha and her team, Kisika, Augustino, and Ngakenya are happily and optimistically engaged in a serious discussion with the 250 women of the groups to help support their decision-making process.

It looks like some groups will switch to cattle. And some will stick with goats. There are many ways forward.

Meet Martin Carnoy-ICSEE supporter

Dr. Carnoy is an author, researcher, and Professor of Economics at the School of Education of Stanford University. He specializes in the relationship of education and economic development, with a particular focus in Latin America and East Africa. He is a long-time supporter of the ICSEE.

I like the ICSEE because, first of all, when I give money to Bob I know how it is going to be used. I know every dollar I give has a direct impact for people, on the ground.

Bob is involved directly in improving people’s lives. He is a problem solver. He figures out the key factors that can make people healthier and their lives better. Using his scientific skills, he goes in and addresses the problem. But maybe even more important, he has found Maasai people who provide leadership alongside him. The mutual trust and collaboration is key, and very unusual.

I know from my own work that if people have health problems, education doesn’t matter. Striving for a basic level of health is a crucial foundation for everything else. Bob addresses these very difficult problems with simple technologies that fit directly into the context of people’s lives.

For example, women cook indoors and the ICSEE stove eliminates the resulting very unhealthy indoor smoke problems. Another example is potable water. Villagers have their animals using the same watering ponds that are the source of human consumption. This is the reality that faces Bob and his team in developing the technology that can produce potable water from these same ponds.

These are not simple problems, and scaling the solutions that ICSEE develops is also difficult. It would be a huge contribution to people’s lives in the villages where Bob is working if he were able to get the government to help him scale up the solutions he is developing. My hope is that he can do that, but it will take more funding.

Clean, safe water from the ICSEE water project

Furthermore, I like to know what is happening when I am giving dollars. I support other charities that tell me about their work, but with the ICSEE I can see what they are actually doing with my donations, and that is really meaningful to me.

I became a donor from the beginning when Bob started working with the stoves, and even before, with his education work in Zanzibar. I liked the idea that he is a physics professor and gave up that comfortable life to go to help teach science to students in Zanzibar and work with stoves with the Maasai.

I had planned to come out and visit the Project last month, and hope to get there as soon as we can all travel again.

Bob greeting the local District Commissioner in 2019

Thank you, Martin, for your generous comments and to all the partners, friends, donors, and members of the Project community. Each one of you is essential to the work and we appreciate all that you do.

Thank you to G Adventures, Philip Lange,and Kisioki Moitiko for photography.

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