• 60 % of our staff needs to come from the local community. This will result in around 40 staff members (Maasai) being able to take care of around 400 to 500 family members and friends
• We supply the local community with drinking water and have a local shop for them
• We allow marketing of the cultural manyattas
• We lease land of the local group ranch so we can do game drives in a different area then the park which will relieve the current pressure on the park
• We organise walks, conducted by our local Maasai guides so guests can be educated on the local Maasai culture
• We try to educate the local community on human and wildlife conflict. Our means of trying to do that are:

Funding of the Amboseli Tsavo Game Scout Association.

• ATSGA recruits and trains local Maasai to become Game Scouts. The goal for these game scouts have is security of their own environment, educating their own people on human/wildlife conflict and securing their environment for future use.

The Mbarinkoi School Project

• Tortilis has funds available to start building a new primary and clinic and maybe a secondary school in a later stage. Our aim is to build this school further away from the park then the current schools so we might be able to relieve the current pressure on the park from the community. Our biggest struggle today is the willingness of the Maasai themselves to help. There are around 5000 Maasai Warriors (Moran) in the area that do not have anything to do. Tortilis asked the community if some of these Moran could provide free labour. We provide funds, designs, materials and professional builders. The community provides free labourers whom will be trained in different building skill while working on the project. The end result will be a higher amount of educated Maasai and less pressure on the park which will ensure a more secure future for the greater Amboseli area. All the above was proposed to the community in April 2005. It is three months later now and we are still waiting for people to help build their own school.

We made an agreement with a group of farmers living just outside the Park boundaries off Kanjoo Gate.

The scheme is that we provide them with seeds of vegetables or fruit that they will not produce for local consumption but are very much used at our lodge. We supervise quantities, rotation, and quality and we go and collect the crop every week paying an agreed price.

On a small scale this is community based conservation in action. They directly benefit from us being here (and we are here because of wildlife) and we avoid having to buy and transport produce from Nairobi. The shamba that they've put aside for us is quite nice in an interesting rural area at the Nyambeni foothill. We can bring guests to visit the site on request.

With the Tharaka people living at the southern boundary of the Park we have a few different exchanges:

• We buy from them handcrafts to be sold in our shop;
• We bring interested guests to their dancing performance for a fee which goes to them directly;
• We finance the building of a local school through clients' donations and with direct funds coming from us.

The community benefit through bed night payments on the Koija star beds amounting to 20,000$ last Calendar year. Cultural visits to the Koija community and opportunity to trade with Loisaba guests . The koija community is a beneficiary the Loisaba Community Trust which sponsored children in the community to higher education, supports the local clinic and is involved in reconstruction of the Ewaso Nyiro Primary school. Employment - the majority of the workforce up to 80% working on the ranch and in the ecotourism enterprise come form the Local area.

The Koija Star Beds are wholly owned by the community and they are deeply involved in their running on both a daily and strategic level.

EPC is situated in the Koiyaki-Lemek Conservation area bordering the Masai Mara Game Reserve. Camp itself has a Bronze eco-rating from ESOK. We endeavour to reduce environmental impact by waste management, use of environmentally sound products, employing people from the local Maasai community ( more than 50% of our staff are Maasai), viewing fees are paid to the Maasai community. Promoting responsible tourism is a large part of conservation, all our guides are KPSGA qualified.

Visits to local Maasai homes (engangs) give clients direct contact with the local people and build friendships and give tourism a real face.

EPC is a member of Campfire Conservation Limited, which monitors the sharing of revenues paid to the Maasai community and has implemented 'Water from wildlife' projects, where water catchment and collection systems have been implemented and shallow wells dug.

When the area surrounding EPC was designated a wildlife conservation area by the Maasai, EPC was instrumental in helping the local Maasai relocate to their new homesteads. Helping them to take building materials with them, reducing the need for tree felling.

• Saruni has facilitated the creation of several community conservation programmes within the Lemek – Koyiaki area. Saruni park fees charged are paid directly to Koyiaki, Olkimitare and Olkirisia community conservation projects which benefit the landowners directly and the community as a whole. By involving community stakeholders directly and allowing them to accrue direct and tangible benefits from tourism, conservation of the wild life heritage in the local area has been furthered.     
• The Yiele Conservancy is product of the vision of Saruni’s Director, Mr. Riccardo Orizio and the local community in the Ngoswani area. This new conservancy as initiated by Saruni (and separate to the extant above) shall bring under management a virtually untouched, un-grazed area of approximately 4000 acres to the South-West of Ngoswani village (12 Km from Saruni) prior to it’s annihilation by agriculture. The area shall function as an independent, exclusive Private Conservation Area with conservation efforts and activities managed jointly by the community and Saruni (and funded by the latter).
• The Yiele conservancy employs 2 rangers which double up as community liaison officers under the guidance of Saruni management to enforce conservancy regulations and protect wildlife in this area. In addition, our fly camp, Campi ya Tembo is situated at the very epicenter o this Private Conservation Area and directly employs support staff from the local community, further fostering conservation in the area through creation of employment and wealth.
• At Saruni we have spared no expense to ensure that we minimize our environmental footprint in the Saruni game valley. One of the myriad benefits of being a small property is the access to technology that is appropriate, applicable and environmentally friendly such as solar generated electricity and hot water, recycling of gray water for the benefit of wildlife and use of organic, biodegrading and non bio-accumulating soaps and detergents. These are just a few of the current methods we employ to ‘tread lightly’.   
• Saruni sponsors a number of young Masai men and women from the local communities each year with a full scholarship at the Koyiaki Guiding School to ensure that the future generations of conservationists and safari guides will see the Masai people in the forefront, rather than just colourful, eye-catching marginal characters.

Cottars is the only tourist facility on the Olderikesi group ranch, adjoining the Maasai Mara National Reserve and the Serengeti National Park. It is a critical dispersal area for the wildlife, and yet is under increasing pressure from the Maasai owners to increase cattle and grow maize.

• Built a school and finance of teacher salary
• Bought medicine for two local clinics
• Operate repeater VHF station for community scouts for liaison for ambulance , security  or wildlife issues
• Pay consolation payments for damage by wildlife
• Forest protection program -  arresting and charging wood cutters on the hills behind camp
• Using our vehicles and resources to arrest illegal cattle grazing in the Mara Reserve
• We were the leaders in a successful bid to stop a major lodge development in the Mara (using National Environment Management Authority Public Complaints Committee Tribunal) that would have eliminated the last wilderness area in the Reserve and set a precedence for other developments in the Reserve proper despite a moratorium on any more developments.
• We promote women’s handiwork for sale.

Our vision of the future is to offer the Maasai landowners of Olderikesi a lease agreement for 25,000 acres of their ranch at payment rates equitable to competing land uses such as agriculture or monoculture domestic stock (cattle etc) which would allow us to control the stocking rates and areas that cattle can be so that wildlife viewing is enhanced in the area around camp.

To this end we plan in 2006 to start a Club; 'The Cottars Wildlife Conservation and Safari Club', whose main goal is to raise the lease money through annual club membership fees while giving members access to the camp facilities and safari experiences.