Blog Action Day

You might have noticed that you’re seeing a lot of environmentally-related posts around

the blogosphere today. Today is Blog Action Day, coordinating tens of thousands of bloggers

to create posts on one broad topic: the environment.

Why I support The WILD Foundation
My favorite environmental group is The WILD

Foundation up in Boulder. They have an interesting focus–both on the importance of

preserving wilderness that is essentially untouched by humanity, and by humanity’s need for that

wilderness. They take the need for unspoiled wilderness as a human right and human

necessity, and they always look for the human connection.

I recently made a donation to a project they’re supporting–Umzi Wethu, a pilot project

that benefits South African wilderness, AIDS orphans, and South Africa’s ecotourism

economy. Wilderness Foundation South

Africa (which WILD supports & fundraises for) took a smart idea and grew it into a

powerful little project that, with some funding and support, can be grown to create

tremendous real benefit to both people and wilderness.

Here’s the pair of problems that led to this solution. South Africa has a growing

population of children orphaned by AIDS.  AIDS has taxed–and in fact, often broken–the

traditional African extended family system, as families bankrupt themselves trying to care

for the sick. Children living on the street, severely traumatized by losing both parents and

abandoned by society, fall prey to  prostitution, street crime, and disease. Over a million

children in South Africa live in this desperate circumstance, and the number is expected to

climb to almost five million in the next 10 years.

At the same time, perhaps rather bizarrely, ecotourism is booming in South Africa.

According to WILD’s figures, tourism has grown 10% a year since 1994 and is the country’s

third largest industry. Ecotourism is a growing source of good skilled employment. But many

of the industry’s trained employees have also fallen to AIDS, and training is hard to

come by.

A remarkable solution
The Umzi Wethu project married these two problems to create a rather beautiful solution.

They train orphaned children for good jobs in game reserves and parks, paying more than

virtually any other work these young people could hope to attain.

The crux of what makes the program work is that the training includes five days every two

months in wilderness. (I was surprised to learn that black city children in Africa typically

never go to the wilderness. "Camping" is not the norm, and black South Africans rarely visit

the country’s reserves or parks. In fact, a child living in the U.S. is far more likely to

have ever seen a zebra or lion than a child living in Africa is.)

The children’s education is supported by training in long-term health, self esteem, and

personal growth. These things make life more enjoyable for those of us living comfortable,

materially rich lives in the West. They’re a stark matter of survival for a child struggling

to create a healthy adult identity without family or support. When WILD founder Vance Martin

spoke to a small group here in Denver about the program, he stressed the way that this

experience in wilderness heals psychic wounds that I might not have thought could be healed

at all.

There probably aren’t 4.7 million jobs in ecotourism, no matter how quickly the industry

grows. But the goal is to develop the Umzi Wethu approach of practical employment training

combined with nurturing and a profound healing experience in wilderness. The approach could,

conceivably, create real change in South Africa for any number of organizations and business

sectors. South Africa must solve this problem–they have tremendous resources, but this is a

monumental challenge to their still-new democracy.

Incidentally, WILD is a four-star charity, which means they’ve attained the highest

rating for organizational efficiency. (That means they’re putting the greatest possible

percentage of your donations into programs, rather than overhead.)

Donate a little, save the world

If you feel called to celebrate Blog Action Day with a donation to support the environment, and supporting human

populations is also important to you, I invite you to head on over to the WILD site, look over the list of projects, and make a

donation. Umzi Wethu is, amazingly, just one of the many powerful projects this tiny

nonprofit supports. WILD and its partners are the kind of organization that can make a real

difference in the health of this planet and its humans in the decades to come.

(You might easily miss the notice that Andrew Muir, WILD director and executive director of the Wilderness Foundation South Africa, was given an award in South Africa for environmentalist of the year. Here’s a PDF from WILD’s site that explains more.

(p.s., I liked this Blog Action Day post over at my beloved copyblogger on how to be a better butterfly. It’s easy to forget that small actions can have great consequences.)