“Following a comprehensive due diligence process, we were pleased to include six new organizations as Maliasili partners in 2021: Coastal and Marine Resource Development (COMRED) and Taita Taveta Wildlife Conservancy Association (TTWCA) in Kenya; Namibia Nature Foundation (NNF) and Save the Rhino Trust (SRT) in Namibia; Conservation Through Public Health (CTPH) in Uganda; and Landscape and Conservation Mentors Organization (LCMO) in Tanzania.”
-Karine Nuulimba – Portfolio Director, Southern Africa

“Maliasili supported Maasai Mara Wildlife Conservancies Association (MMWCA) in adapting its COVID support initiatives to conservancies to ensure operations remained strong while balancing the transition back to traditional tourism revenue streams. Over the 18-month period from July 2020 to December 2021 MMWCA distributed more than 2.1M dollars in COVID support to conservancies.”
-Kasmira Cockerill – Senior Manager, Kenya Portfolio

“Our new partners want to elevate their influence and impact across the landscapes where they work. Tsavo Trust started out to protect the Super Tuskers of Tsavo from poaching. Today, they’re aiming to play a more critical role in the management of the entire Tsavo Ecosystem, which involves strengthening the role of communities in conservation there. IMPACT is an organization established by indigenous people in Kenya to address issues that undermine Indigenous Peoples’ access to livelihood, a healthy environment, and socio-cultural rights. IMPACT’s new strategic plan has defined “human rights” with better clarity and purpose ensuring they can work on tangible result areas on which they can measure progress on such a difficult area of work.”
-Akshay Vishwanath – Portfolio Manager, East Africa

“This year NACSO confronted this challenge head-on by taking a close look at the problem they're trying to solve, and how they as an institution can go and should go about solving it. As a critical coordinating and convening space for Namibia’s community conservation efforts, NACSO’s efforts to peel back the layers of their work and their structures and rethink some of what they do was critical and will position them to achieve much more impact going forward.“
-Omagano Shooya – Portfolio Manager, Southern Africa

“CHAT (Communities Health Africa Trust) works to provide access to basic and reproductive health services, alongside environmental education, to remote communities in Kenya. In the past, CHAT never prioritized storytelling in getting their message across. Through our communication support, we helped them to refine their messaging and create clear compelling stories that showcase the importance of the work they do and the impact that they have. And in November their work was featured in a full-length photo essay in The Guardian.”
-Gathoni Mwai – Senior Associate, East Africa

“We convened our first partners’ ‘gathering’ that featured 8 organizations starting out on the Maliasili partnership journey. The event showcased the overall work of Maliasili from portfolio support, to communications and leadership development. It helped the partners start the Maliasili partnership from the same standpoint, clarify expectations, and make new connections with their peers.”
-Njenga Kahiro – Portfolio Director, East Africa

“A new group of inspiring and visionary conservation leaders have joined our leadership program. With the addition of 18 leaders in the African Conservation Leadership Network (ACLN) 4 cohort and 18 joining our upcoming program in Madagascar, we have expanded the community to include participants from Botswana, Uganda, Zimbabwe and South Africa. We’re excited to work with these leaders, support them in their journey as they steer organizations towards greater success for people and nature.”
-Anna Davis – Director of Leadership Programs

We helped the leadership networks to stay connected and strengthen relationships through virtual gatherings, workshops, and training on topics such as strategic influencing, alongside more intimate catch-up and check-in calls. This helped leaders find the support they need, stay connected and continue to build new partnerships.
-Richard Ndiga – Senior Associate, Leadership Program

“We successfully shifted to an online learning management system (CANVAS) and developed exciting new content - such as the keys to successful collaborations - for the leadership program that helps participants explore how to achieve truly successful collaborations for their organizations.”
-Cara Scott – Coordinator, Leadership Program

Our 24 Readers, which feature organizational and leadership development tips and tricks, helped conservation practitioners improve the way they think about strategy, work planning, and prioritizing their wellbeing. One partner wrote: “Your Maliasili Reader on Work Plans inspired and encouraged us… using your template and words of advice, we finalized our plan for 2021” and another said our Readers are “A brilliant mix of practical tools, and compelling content to keep us all sane.”
-Jessie Davie – Director of Communications and Learning

“Through various approaches - including providing access to media coverage, in-person workshops, advice, and more - we continuously helped demystify and demonstrate the benefits of investing in effective communications. For example, the media engagement workshop with leaders across our various networks provided tools, knowledge, and practical expertise on successfully engaging the media.
-Wanjiku Kinuthia – Communications Manager

“We hosted our first-ever public webinar and training on strategic planning, which brought together more than 200 people from all over Africa and around the world. One attendee said, “This has been an amazing session. I have really enjoyed the strategic planning webinar, and am inspired that we can actually have the strategic plan we need.”

A recording of it is available and we launched a set of new products on strategic planning that are available here.”
-Nikita L. Pakhare – Design and Communications Coordinator

“We noticed that teams, sometimes spread between diverse and isolated geographies, don't necessarily speak the same language. By facilitating inclusive and participatory strategy workshops, Maliasili helped Fanamby find common definitions to development/ conservation jargon like “community, behavior change, and capacity building”. The team now has a clearer understanding of what these terms mean for them, making their strategic planning process a much clearer endeavor.”
-Liz Day – Portfolio Manager, Madagascar

The MIHARI network is transitioning from being housed by international NGOs to becoming an independent national organization. This is a delicate process and Maliasili is shouldering the process by providing extensive and tailored leadership support to ensure MIHARI has robust processes and procedures in place.
-Marianne Randriamihaja – Portfolio Associate, Madagascar

“It was exciting to welcome Conservation through Public Health (CTPH) as our first partner in Uganda and begin the organizational support journey with them through an organizational assessment workshop. Our new partnership with Landscape & Conservation Mentors Organization (LMCO) sees us expanding to rich and complex landscapes in Western Tanzania that usually have a low presence of local conservation organizations.”
-Eliezeri Sungusia - Portfolio Manager, East Africa

“We stayed committed and worked through many challenges to make sure we could support our partners in any way possible. Despite travel and border challenges, we managed to visit ACADIR in Angola, and gained a much deeper understanding of the context they operate in, the nature of their work, and opportunities to amplify their impact in Cuando Cubango and drive the CBNRM agenda in Angola.
-Joana Trindade – Portfolio Manager, Southern Africa

“We invested nearly $2 million in our portfolio partners by mobilizing funding and providing grants, including over $800,000 from the Maasai Landscape Conservation Fund, which helped partners in East Africa secure legal title over roughly 250,000 acres of community land, and to strengthen the management of over one million acres of community conservation areas in northern Tanzania and southern Kenya.”
-Fred Nelson – Chief Executive Officer

“We strengthened our administrative infrastructure and readied it for growth, improving internal controls, creating a new operating reserve policy and decision-making framework to disperse authority throughout the team. We introduced a new discretionary leave policy to help our team deal with diverse and challenging environments.”
-Janelle Brazington – Director of Finance and Administration

“We welcomed on board eight new colleagues across East and southern Africa, and Madagascar. Our expanded team will ensure we’re able to support our growing portfolio of organizations and leaders effectively.”
-Beatrice Muchiri – Finance and Administration Coordinator

Introducing our Strategic Plan:

Strengthening organizations: triple our portfolio from 30 - 90

Enabling outstanding leaders: expand our leadership program to train 200 conservation leaders

Amplify local resources and influence: increase our grantmaking by five-fold ($40 million) and influence the wider conservation field to commit at least $100 million more to local organizations
-Elizabeth Singleton – Chief Operations Officer