Children of Conservation co-founder Kerry Stumpe recently received Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary’s Lifetime Achievement Award from Dr. Jane Goodall during its 25th Anniversary Gala in Kampala, Uganda. This award recognized Stumpe and CofC for their continued efforts to improve the lives of animals, workers and children involved in conservation over the past 20 years.
Children of Conservation founder Kerry, and board member, Mike are featured in this month’s edition of TravelEssence Magazine. The two eco-heroes are acknowledged for their incredible work helping to build gabions to protect the shoreline of Ngamba Island Chimapanzee Sanctuary from catastrophic rising water levels due to global warming.
The challenges of 2020 were not just limited to COVID-19 at Ngamba Chimpanzee Sanctuary in Uganda. The catastrophe of climate change came to their shores in the form of rising lake levels and uncontrollable flooding. Water levels shot up in 2020 and destroyed infrastructure, piers and eroded the delicate shoreline of the 100 acre island.
In June of this year, villagers entered Bwindi Impenetrable Forest National Park in Uganda hunting for food. They encountered one of Bwindi’s best known silverbacks, Rafiki, panicked and speared him. Rafiki died, leaving the Nkuringo group vulnerable and their future uncertain.
Six Kenyan teenagers have been part of pilot program between Children of Conservation and Sheldrick Wildlife Trust. In exchange for agreements from their village leaders that no more elephants will be killed, we’ve been providing scholarships for their brightest kids to go to the best school in their region. The six students all graduated high school earlier this summer and we are so proud to announce that every one of them has been offered a place at university! For these young people, from very impoverished rural communities, they are the first in their family to go to university.