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A summit where young people from five Kenyan counties pitched real businesses for a grant to start them, so that conservation’s next generation got capital as well as advice.
02About this project
Young people who live alongside wildlife need a living that does not come at wildlife’s expense. The foundation’s answer was The Elephant Den, TED for short: a competition with money at the end of it rather than one more workshop.
In March 2022 the foundation and Stand Up Shout Out brought five groups of young Kenyans together at the SUSO headquarters, where they camped for the summit. They came from Nakuru, Amboseli, Taita Taveta, Embu and Nairobi, and each group presented a commercial business built for the place they actually live, competing for a grant to start it. A panel of four heard them out: Peter Karanja and Annabella Francescon for the foundation, and Peter Moll and Poebe for SUSO. The panel gave advice aimed at turning the ideas into working enterprises. The proposals were, in the foundation’s words, impressive and well thought out for the areas they come from.
It did not end at the pitch. The following month the foundation handed four acres of land near Embu town to SUSO’s chief executive Peter Moll and the Embu County Director, to be set up as a tree nursery and a base for other agricultural work. The result is a commercial venture for young people that is also good for the land it sits on.
The foundation described TED at the time as a new chapter: empowering youth into the future with commercial enterprises for their own livelihoods. The idea behind it runs through everything the foundation has built since: conservation holds when the people nearest to wildlife have something to gain from it.