Empowering female rangers
Wildhood is a proud partner of Akashinga – the world’s first all female anti-poaching unit. Launched in Zimbabwe in 2017 Akashinga is a success story which has changed the face of community conservation by putting local women at the forefront of conservation management.
Support a ranger
To keep an Akashinga ranger in the field requires a monthly salary, uniform, boots and equipment.
Akashinga addresses social issues to provide conservation outcomes that protects millions of hectares of rich biodiversity across Africa. Akashinga’s first mission was to protect wildlife and nature in Zimbabwe’s Lower Zambezi Valley. This area lost 40% of its elephants in the 16 years prior to Akashinga’s arrival. Since Akashinga began protecting the area in 2017 poaching have been reduced by 80% and the elephants have started to return to areas they were previously hunted in. Today 295 female rangers are employed to protect a network of 3 million hectares of wilderness in three countries and the journey has just begun!
WOMEN EMPOWERMENT
The Akashinga project employ women only and solely from the local rural communities. The project favours the most disadvantaged women; previous orphans, victims of serious sexual assault and abuse and women who have lost custody of their children. A growing body of evidence, from amongst other UN Women, suggests that empowering women is the single biggest force for positive change in the world today. To give women the opportunity to become self-sufficient through employment as rangers brings lots of positive effects, not only for wildlife and nature but for people and whole communities. Corruption is non- existing, domestic violence has decreased and the economic benefits to the community are higher as more dollars are invested back into the household and on child health and education, at the hands of women.
Our local partner
Wildhood Foundation partnered with Akashinga to support the launch of the female ranger unit in May 2018. As a non-profit organization specialized in anti-poaching Akashinga (formerly IAPF) has many years of experience from how to most effectively combat wildlife crime and protect species like elephant, rhino lion and pangolin. Akashinga works together with local communities, authorities and police to prevent all sorts of crime linked to wildlife and nature and Wildhood has been the organization’s European strategic partner since start.
Our aim is to build long-term relationships with our local partners and to grow our impact over time. Our support have funded salaries and equipment to enable the operation to grow from an initial 16 female rangers to now 295 employees. The long-term goal is to have an army of 1000 women protecting a network of 20 African wilderness areas, covering 5 million acres, by the end of 2026.
Wildhood specifically support:
- Recruitment and training of female park rangers
- Purchase and distribution of uniforms, boots and field equipment
- Strategic efforts to prevent wildlife crime
- Relationship building with local communities surrounding the wilderness
- Efforts to prevent Human Wildlife Conflicts
- Education through scholarships to children in villages surrounding the wilderness
The positive effects of women
Through employing women from rural communities as park rangers, besides fulfilling the biodiversity goal (Goal 15) several development goals are are also met. Direct effects are reduced poverty and hunger (Goal 1 and 2), decent working conditions and economic growth (Goal 8) and increased equality (Goal 5 and 10). Indirect effects of recruiting female park rangers are that women, compared to men, tend to spend more of their income on their children’s health and education which contributes to Goal 3, 4 and 6. Lean more about the Global Goals for Sustainable Development.
