Green Living Project Champions AWF

Three intrepid travelers with a singular mission -- to educate and inspire citizens to live and support a more sustainable lifestyle -- recently arrived in the African Heartlands.

Rob Holmes, founder of The Green Living Project, is a longtime business leader, marketing strategist, and conservation consultant. Along with executive producer John Canning and journalist Molly Little, Holmes will travel the world to document, film, and publicize successful and unique sustainable projects. The Green Living Project launched in Africa this spring.

One of the team's first stops was Sabyinyo Silverback Lodge in Rwanda, a high-end, AWF-supported lodge designed to conserve the highly endangered mountain gorilla while benefiting local people.

"Some accomplishments happen in a vacuum, the act of a singular organization or individual. But their successes are never as sweet as those that are shared. Built and run by safari lodge operators Governors' Camp, Sabyinyo Silverback Lodge is actually owned by a community trust, SACOLA, marking a shift, a revolutionary approach to lodge management and profit distribution in Africa," Little writes.

The Green Living team also visited the Maasai Steppe Heartland, stopping at Manyara Ranch, which occupies a key wildlife corridor linking Tarangire and Manyara National Parks. AWF recently helped secure the ranch for conservation and contributed to efforts to rebuild the Manyara Ranch Primary School, garnering praise from Little.

"To give an example of the improvements - each child now has their own bunk - they were formerly four to a single bunk. Overcrowding is an understatement of former conditions and the improvement is marked," she says.

Other recent stops included the Burunge Wildlife Management Area, which area villagers formed with AWF's help, and Esilalei Cultural Boma, an enterprise run by an AWF-supported women's group.

Follow the team's dispatches from the African Heartlands and other destinations at www.greenlivingproject.com.