LOISABA - MAASAI COMMUNITY

The Loisaba Community Trust (LCT) is a charitable trust registered in Kenya. It aims to assist the area surrounding Loisaba Wilderness by encouraging community–driven enterprise and fostering the development of philanthropic based community initiatives.

Since 2000, the LCT has championed community enterprise by helping to set-up the community-owned Koija Starbeds tourism facility, women’s group craft-making and a cultural manyatta. It has also sponsored many smaller projects as well as livestock husbandry courses.

Loisaba Managing Director Tom Silvester believes that, “conservation cannot be furthered unless you are preaching to an educated population. Conservation is a luxury when all you can do is focus on your next meal”.

The LCT thus attempts to ensure that the traditionally marginalized Laikipiak Maasai and Samburu people are both healthy and educated.

To this end the LCT has already granted 26 scholarships to secondary schools, three to college/university and two to trade school since its inception in 2000. It has built classrooms, paid teacher salaries and provided education supplies for hundreds of children. In 2003 – in conjunction with AMREF and the Kenyan Government – the LCT built the Ewaso Health Centre, which serves 400 patients a month in this previously ill-served area. Plans to build a further 16 classrooms and to provide area schools with water are complete and funding for the program is being sought.

In addition, the LCT sponsors five local nursery schools, which all need assistance or complete payment of teachers as well as learning materials of all kinds. Since 2000, the LCT has supplied them with everything from bunk beds and mattresses to latrines and sports equipment.

The LCT has an American funding vehicle, which is able to accept 506 funding and other donations. The Loisaba Community Conservation Foundation is a US registered charitable private foundation, which can be contacted through:

The Trustees, LCCF P.O. Box 655 Saratoga Springs, NY 12866.

The Trust is administered by James T. Towne who can be contacted on james.towne@townelaw.com, telephone: 001 518-452-1800

www.loisabaccf.org