From 3 to 5 November, 200 delegates from 19 countries, representing 81 projects and communities, met at Brackenhurst in Limuru, Kenya, for the Community-Led Conservation Conference. Organised by Ewaso Lions, it was Kenya’s first conference dedicated to community-led conservation. MSWC was one of its sponsors. Our president, Guy Pfeffermann, attended with Landis Gabel of our board and Irene Crowe of our advisory board.
Most of the delegates were community members, and they led much of the programme, from the stage and from the floor. Sessions ran with simultaneous interpretation into Samburu, Kiswahili and Portuguese. Guy was struck by how rarely a conference brings PhDs together to listen to community members.
LAMP at Brackenhurst
On the afternoons of 3 and 4 November, Allan Ward, Heiz Wadegu and Lavias Lekuuk of Forward Consulting ran “Lead from the Ground Up”, a hands-on LAMP workshop in decision-making, team leadership and stakeholder engagement, with interpretation into Swahili and Maa.
On the evening of 4 November, the conference screened Light for Wildlife, the 42-minute film about what happens when the people who run Africa’s community conservancies get the chance to learn how to lead. A Q&A followed. “A packed audience of 200 left the movie, many with tears in their eyes,” Guy said. You can watch the film on our homepage.
What the delegates took home
A week later, Shivani Bhalla, founder and CEO of Ewaso Lions and a member of our board, wrote to the conference’s backers. What stayed with her were the young conservationists who came up to her, one after another, over those three days. So many of them said some version of the same thing:
“Now I know the way. I thought I was alone and now I know I am not.”
“They had never seen people like them doing this work,” she wrote. “Groups who had never met are already planning visits to each other’s sites and following up on conversations that began over a cup of chai. That spark is still travelling.”
Ewaso Lions will share the conference proceedings and a five-minute video when they are ready, and we will post them here.
Thank you to Shivani and the Ewaso Lions team, and to Anthony Ochieng for the photographs. You can read our post from before the conference too.