aFairJourney

To provide young Maasai in Ngorongoro opportunities for further education

The pitch

Ngorongoro is a unique protected area. It was created in 1959 to ensure the safeguarding of an exceptional natural heritage listed as World Heritage by UNESCO, but also to protect the nomadic culture of Maasai herders who use their pastures, in harmony with the environment, for centuries. In order to stop the number of permanent residents of Ngorongoro from increasing and thus threatening the fragile balance between preserved nature and Maasai communities, the government of Tanzania decided to promote, from 1994, access to secondary and university studies for students from the Maasai community.

1- The project

The Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA), much larger than the vast world-famous crater, is one of the only protected areas in the world to have retained its indigenous population within the park. They are essentially Maasai and Tatoga.
Pupils can do their primary studies in the park. They are then obliged to continue their studies outside Ngorongoro, which of course generates significant costs that the Maasai pastoral community cannot bear alone. The Tanzanian government and the NCAA (organization in charge of the management of the protected area) supports a number of students by awarding scholarships. Unfortunately, not all students have access to it and must therefore abandon their dreams of studies and return to the life of breeders of their parents.
This unfortunately has a perverse effect because if the profession of pastoral breeder is quite respectable, the number of residents inside Ngorongoro cannot increase indefinitely or risk seeing the disappearance of a unique natural environment in the world. It is therefore in order to reduce the demographic pressure within Ngorongoro and the impact of the growing number of cattle on the environment, but also in order to promote the status of women by avoiding early marriages and births that the project of "a safari for a scholarship" germinated within the community.


2- Project costs

The project has two phases:

- The first one is a study and awareness phase. Indeed, it is necessary to identify potential candidates and validate their application according to criteria to be put in place locally. At the same time, an awareness campaign must be set up for the leaders of the Maasai community (the elders), in order to obtain their full cooperation. This phase therefore includes many trips and information and awareness sessions as well as the development of management tools for the allocation of grants (selection criteria, etc.). The cost of this first phase has been estimated at €17,000 (the details established by the Maasai correspondent at the NCAA are available on request).

- The second phase is the actual funding of the scholarships. Although it is impossible to define a single cost for these scholarships as the profiles are varied, from the pursuit of secondary studies near Ngorongoro to university in Arusha or Dar es Salaam, it has been agreed that in each participation donors, i.e. €2500, €2000 would be directly allocated to a scholarship.

3 - Your participation in the Endulen project and your visit to the Massais community
On this project, the participation in the project is fixed at 2500€ per visitor plus the plane ticket and the visa which remain at his expense.
The visit to the Ngorongoro site will last 5 to 6 days, including 3 to 4 days in the Park.
You will be invited by the community and fully supported as soon as you step off the plane at the foot of Kilimanjaro.
You will spend a day with the Massais followed by 2 to 3 days of discovering the riches of the Park:
•The famous Ngorongoro Crater
•Olduvai Valley at the dawn of mankind
•The Highlands and the Oldonyo Lengai Volcano
•The plains of Ndutu during the great migration....

The technical details, dates, flight reservations, insurance, organization of the trip and preparation of the on-site visit will be handled by "A Fair Journey". A pledge signed jointly by A Fair Journey and the Massai community will be provided to the visitor, detailing all the details of the journey.

You are interested, contact us!
Goodbye.

Project status : Ongoing, registrations open