Travelers Conservation Trust

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Tad Bradley is fundraising
Zimbabwe’s people and wildlife need your help
To all our guests, friends, donors and supporters,

We hope you appreciate how much your support has meant to the conservation of the wildlife of Hwange and those people living in the communities bordering the park. There's no doubt we couldn't have achieved all we did in 2020 without you - read our last update below for more details.

We are closing out this fundraiser but the need continues. To learn how you can help, visit:
https://www.imvelosafarilodges.com/hwange-needs-you.html

A huge Zimbabwe thank you to Kurt and Anne Kutay from the Travelers Conservation Trust, our non-profit partners in the USA. We could not have raised these funds without your support - THANK YOU from the bottom of our hearts!

We hope to see you all on safari in Hwange in 2021!

Thank you!

The Imvelo Family

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Zimbabwe is facing its worst drought in nearly half a century, compounded by the devastating COVID-19 pandemic. Southern Africa’s greatest safari destination is reeling, its people starving, and its wildlife threatened. Especially vulnerable is Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe's oldest and largest game reserve. Imvelo Safari Lodges works tirelessly to protect and sustain Hwange's endangered wildlife – including nearly 50,000 elephants – as well as thousands of villagers who depend on the park to survive.

Help Imvelo protect Hwange’s people and wildlife
Please contribute to Imvelo’s conservation and community initiatives during this challenging time. In the US, your donation is 100% tax-deductible.

$25 provides lunch to one school child for six months.
$130 provides school fees for one child for a year (including books and uniform)
$150 provides a wildlife protection unit with yearly medical insurance and supplies.
$500 maintains one community manual water pump during the dry season
$7000 maintains one solar hybrid pump for wildlife during the dry season

You can make a real difference!
With your support, Imvelo can continue to:

Provide over 3000 children PER DAY with school lunches during the dry months of May to December. This gives children the energy to walk to school, to learn more effectively and ensures attendance and the continuity of education. Learn more

Deliver food aid to isolated and drought-stricken villages until productive harvests re-establish food security. Last year, we managed to deliver two 30 tonne truckloads of maize to our frontline communities prior to the rains.

Maintain 19 solar hybrid pumps and pump 16 water pans in and around Hwange. These hybrid solar units pump over 750 million litres of water a day to the surface for up to 10,000 elephants and a number of other animals.

Maintain over 80 community water wells and continue to solarize as many of these as possible. These water points provide clean water to thousands of people in our frontline communities south of Hwange.

Fund the Cobras Community Wildlife Protection Unit. This Imvelo-funded anti-poaching squad is made up of 19 scouts from local villages. As well as providing protection for park animals, the Cobras also help communities set aside communal land to conserve wildlife outside of the park and on their own lands. Learn more

Improve access to healthcare by building infrastructure and by operating the annual Smile and See Safari. Over the course of the past 8 years, volunteer dentists and optometrists from Spain and Italy have provided over 27,000 rural Zimbabwe’s with free dental and eye care over the past decade. Learn more

Your donation is 100% tax-deductible in the USA
The Travelers Conservation Trust (TCT) transfers all donated funds directly to the Imvelo Safari Lodges Trust to be distributed where most needed. For more information on the various projects and the costs associated with maintaining Imvelo’s conservation and community efforts, please contact [email redacted].

Learn more about Imvelo's school lunch program in the video below. The information in the video refers to the drought and hunger situation in 2019. In 2020, the need will be even greater thanks to continuing drought, crop failure and the lack of tourism support due to Covid-19:

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47 supporters
Wildland Adventures’ foundation Travelers Conservation Trust. is fundraising
Zimbabwe School Feeding Program
A severe drought is underway in Zimbabwe and we expect there to be food shortages throughout the region this dry season. Children will be especially vulnerable.

We've chosen to help raise funds for The Hwange School Feeding Program which has been running since 2011. Western Zimbabwe, known as Matabeleland, is an area of unreliable rainfall, but life – human and animal – is dependent on this resource. In years of poor rainfall, crops fail and this means no food for rural Zimbabweans or fodder for their livestock. Many school children arrive at school hungry as there was no breakfast available at home.

As a consequence their concentration and performance in the classroom were poor. After witnessing exhausted hungry children falling asleep in class and struggling to walk to and from school every day, our partners in Zimbabwe have made it their mission during drought years to provide a cooked meal to every school child at the schools in the Hwange districts we support. 2016 was their biggest school feeding year where we provided 412,000 meals to school children in the area - this year the country was affected by a terrible drought which saw crop failure in many rural communities and as a result, many households did not produce sufficient food for their families. 2019 is expected to see more severe conditions later this season.

$3 is the cost to supply one meal per day to a school child for 1 month ($0.16 per meal) and while every donated cent from guests and donors is used to purchase foodstuffs, our local partners provide all of the logistics including sourcing, storing and distributing tons of food. We encourage guests if they want to help, to get involved in this worthwhile program. In addition to these programs, three of our preferred lodges (Bomani, Camelthorn and Gorges) are built on or adjacent to communal tribal land bordering national parks. The local communities are not only neighbors to our preferred lodges, but they also serve as landlords and partners. Beyond the social service investments resulting from tourism, 100 people from the surrounding communities are employed on a long-term basis as guides or camp staff, with another 30 employed as part-time, seasonal staff. We firmly believe that community initiatives are powerful conservation initiatives. Engaging and empowering local communities is the first and most important step in conservation.

When communities see the benefits from tourism, they are much more likely to help deter poachers and tolerate problem animals in their villages.

You will automatically receive a tax receipt from our Charity partner, PayPal Giving Fund after a donation has been made.

Please consider helping.

Wildest Regards,

Travelers Conservation Trust & Wildland Adventures

More information about Travelers Conservation Trust: The Travelers Conservation Trust [TCT] is a section 501(c)3 non-profit organization registered in the State of Washington. TCT is an affiliated foundation of Wildland Adventures created to provide a means by which travelers and concerned citizens can contribute financially and tangibly to support conservation, cultural heritage and community welfare combating poverty and supporting education and health care at a local level worldwide. Donations may qualify as a charitable deduction for federal income tax purposes. 100% of contributions go directly to the cause because Wildland Adventures supports all administrative costs of the TCT and most of the projects are managed by volunteer assistance.
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42 supporters
Wildland Adventures’ foundation Travelers Conservation Trust. is fundraising
Water For Hwange
We are raising $24,000 to purchase, install and maintain four new hybrid water pumps in and around Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe. These solar-diesel pumps will provide sustainable and reliable water sources for wildlife and drinking water for local villages.

Why these pumps are important:
Hwange National Park, lying an hour south of Victoria Falls, is unique among "Africa's Great Parks" in that it has no major rivers within its boundaries. When this park was created in the 1920’s, its borders failed to include reliable year-round water sources, a major ecological oversight. Ted Davison, the first Warden in the park was faced with a growing number of human-elephant conflicts during Zimbabwe’s annual dry season when thirsty herds migrated outside the park and into surrounding communities in search of water. He thoughtfully established a network of windmill-driven pumps within the park which provided reliable water during the dry season and in turn, kept the elephants and other wildlife from straying into local villages. The wildlife of Hwange flourished under his legacy of protection and year-round water supply. Diesel generators replaced the windmills but now those generators have aged, begun to fall into disrepair and need to be replaced. Modern technology has made solar-diesel hybrids more affordable and the best solution for providing the water resources for both wildlife and the surrounding communities.

We feel strongly about supporting this project; several of us here at Wildland have visited Hwange and the surrounding communities and seen firsthand the need for upgraded water infrastructure. In support of this project, and in collaboration with our partners in Zimbabwe overseeing these conservation efforts, we are running a unique Water for Hwange Safari June 10-20, 2019 . This trip will be co-led by Wildland staff and Mark Butcher, a native Zimbabwean and visionary conservationist who skillfully supports both wildlife conservation and community development in and around Hwange. Guests will be able to see firsthand the impact that renewed water resources will have on the wildlife and communities of Hwange.

You will automatically receive a tax receipt from our Charity partner, PayPal Giving Fund after a donation has been made.

Donation Gifts: To say thank you for contributing to our fundraiser we've made some great thank you gifts. Including, having your name engraved on a plaque that will be on one of the pumps we install.

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27 supporters

About Travelers Conservation Trust

To advocate for children, women and families in the world who are victims of poverty and injustice by working together with in-country NGO's, communities and individuals tackling these complex issues we are jointly able to determine where we can be most effective. We believe that injustice and poverty can be overcome by working together. We execute this by giving people an opportunity to live out their inherent desire to see justice prevail and to set things right in the world. Our projects, training and destinations all have this as a fundamental component.

Find Travelers Conservation Trust at

Causes

International development

Established

2009

Tax ID

26-4490451

NTEE code

International Development, Relief Services

Travelers Conservation Trust is a 501(c)(3) public charity, EIN 26-4490451. Donations are tax-deductible. Select content is provided by GuideStar.

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