The Akashinga
Location: Zimbabwe
Date: February 2019
Donation: A$4,00-
The Akashinga (The Brave Ones) are a team of all-female, anti-poaching rangers in Zimbabwe, and one of the best community driven conservation models we've ever seen. Selection is exclusively available to unemployed single mothers, abandoned wives, sex workers, victims of sexual and physical abuse, wives of poachers in prison and widows and orphans. They're trained by a former Australian Navy Diver and Special Operations Sniper, and managed to arrest 80 poachers last year.
We're sent them $4,000 to spend on computers, phones, drones and firearms.
Website: https://www.iapf.org/akashinga/
UPDATE!
July 2019
We got an email from Damien and the rest of the team in Zimbabwe. They were really chuffed with the AUS$4,000 donation. They also included some more information about the rest of the program.
....
Hello mate,
Thank you so much for the donations. The funds have been used to purchase a laptop, phones for data capture and recording in the field and spot trackers, which we use to monitor our positions and coordinate operations.
All information is relayed back to the ops room where command, control, information and communications and centralised and used to deploy our resources. The contribution from your team has played a huge role in the effectiveness of these operations and to date we have made 103 arrests.
Thank you so much mate. You are all great!!
Regards,
Damien
