We are very excited to report that while we continue to expand The Sh*t Starts Here in the Musanze District of Volcanoes National Park in NW Rwanda, we will also be meeting with Rwandan communities in the NE, next to Akagara National Park and in the SW, next to Nyungwe Forest National Park.
Akagara is home to all manner of wildlife, including elephants, giraffe, zebra and soon, lions, cheetah and leopard.
Nyungwe is home to the largest concentration of primates in all of Africa, including large families of chimpanzees.
So once again, our project becomes a conservation initiative as well as an income-generating, community-building one, in that anything that stabilizes the communities around the national parks protects the wildlife inside its boundaries from poaching.
We were encouraged to spread the sh*t farther afield during our last visit back in October, 2012.
We were honoured to be invited to attend an annual general meeting of the Rwandan Development Board (RDB) and the various sector heads in Musanze District.
The meeting focused on continued economic development, community improvement and park protection and conservation.
What an exciting moment for us when the Chief Park Warden, having responded somewhat quizzically at our initial meeting 2 years ago, now stood and described our project to those gathered, explaining, we learned from Paul's whispered translations, that it was the perfect example of an initiative that meets all the RDB's goals and mandates-
targeting the disadvantaged to achieve life improvement;
encouraging long-term vision, ownership, community participation, benefit and sustainability;
having a visible impact;
having a way of tracking;
having a management plan;
decreasing human pressure on the park-
and we did it all with no economic impact on the RDB!
Paul really is a genius!
Buoyed by this affirmation, we have our sights set on spreading the sh*t far and wide.
And so,we are equally excited to report that we will also be expanding the project into Northern Uganda, beginning with a visit there at the end of January, 2013, to determine our plan of action.
We will be working with some of the communities ravaged by Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army, helping them, in a small but effective way, as they recover and rebuild.
