Having worked in the charity sector, we felt strongly that any venture we undertook, needed to give something back. Myochi was named after our children. The charities that we support, Big Life Foundation and Loving Humanity; are working to provide a better world for them to grow up in. Everything in life is interlinked.
‘A hundred years ago, there were one and a half billion people on Earth. Now, over six billion crowd our fragile planet.’ David Attenborough.
Human Activities have caused the world’s wildlife populations to plummet by more than two-thirds in the last 50 years.
Our planet's fragile ecosystems are being pushed to their limits. It is now more important than ever that we protect its habitats and the wildlife they sustain.
Big Life Foundation
Protecting over 1.6 million acres of wilderness in the Amboseli-Tsavo-Kilimanjaro ecosystem of East Africa, Big Life partners with local communities to protect nature for the benefit of all.
Since its inception, Big Life has expanded to employ hundreds of local Maasai rangers—with more than 30 permanent outposts and tent-based field units, 14 patrol vehicles, 2 tracker dogs, and 2 planes for aerial surveillance.
Co-founded in September 2010 by photographer Nick Brandt, conservationist Richard Bonham, and entrepreneur Tom Hill, Big Life was the first organization in East Africa to establish coordinated cross-border anti-poaching operations.
What Big Life Foundation Do:
Using innovative conservation strategies and collaborating closely with local communities, partner NGOs, national parks, and government agencies, Big Life seeks to protect and sustain East Africa’s wildlife and wild lands, including one of the greatest populations of elephants left in East Africa.
The first organization in East Africa with coordinated anti-poaching teams operating on both sides of the Kenya-Tanzania border, Big Life recognizes that sustainable conservation can only be achieved through a community-based collaborative approach. This approach is at the heart of Big Life’s philosophy that conservation supports the people and people support conservation.
Big Life has established a successful holistic conservation model in the Amboseli-Tsavo-Kilimanjaro ecosystem that can be replicated across the African continent.
Big Life’s Programmes:
Wildlife Protection
Big Life strives to prevent the poaching of all wildlife within our area of operation. Their initiatives include Anti-poaching, wildlife crime/Anti-trafficking and Rhino Protection.
One of the largest employers of local Maasai in the ecosystem, Big Life’s community rangers are expertly trained and well-equipped to tackle a variety of wildlife crimes. Since their inception, poaching of all animals has dramatically declined in their area of operation.
Human Wildlife Conflict
Human-Wildlife Conflict (HWC) takes three primary forms across Big Life’s area of operation: crops raided by wildlife, particularly elephants; livestock killed by predators, such as lions; and humans injured or killed due to living in close proximity with wildlife.
Big Life works strategically to mitigate HWC, such as by deploying rapid response ranger teams to move elephants away from farms and building crop-protection fences to create a hard boundary between elephant habitat and agricultural areas.
Big Life also conducts predator protection initiatives to offset the impact of humans living in close proximity with apex predators like lions. As a result, the lion population in Big Life’s area of operation is one of the few populations in all of Africa that is growing, not declining.
Habitat Protection
The Greater Amboseli ecosystem is generally regarded as one of the riches wildlife areas left in Africa. Increasing human-wildlife conflict in the ecosystem is a direct result of wildlife and local communities competing for limited resources on the same shrinking land areas.
In order to reduce conflict, wildlife habitat must be strategically protected, and is an increasingly urgent program focus for Big Life.
Helping the Community
The Greater Amboseli ecosystem is home to the Maasai people – one of the foremost indigenous ethnic groups in Africa. Winning the hearts and minds of the local community and providing a mutual benefit through conservation is the only way to protect wildlife and wild lands far into the future.
To that end, Big Life provides a number of services in support of the community, aligned with Big Life’s ethos: if conservation supports the people, then people will support conservation. These services include education and healthcare initiatives, and also lesser known activities, such as using ranger vehicles as ambulances, responding to crime within the community, conducting search and rescue operations, and more.
How you can help
A percentage of each Myochi Art print will be donated to the Big Live Foundation. There are a number of ways you can further support the invaluable work of the Big Life Foundation. These include supporting their ‘Ranger Club Programme’, making a ‘Vehicle Donation’ or choose them as your ‘AmazonSmile Charity’. All this can be accessed through the link below.
100 million girls do not go to school – in part due to the lack of a period pad.
Source: UNESCO
Research in Kenya estimates that 10% of adolescent girls have traded sex for sanitary products, as these products are simply too expensive for many to buy.
Access to basic sanitary products, clean water and education are things that we often take for granted yet still thousands of women around the world go without. In 2014, mum of three Amy Peake saw a photo from a Palastinian Refugee Camp. She couldn't stop thinking about how refugees managed practical life. Amy put everything on hold and despite many hurdles set up a truly inspirational charity, Loving Humanity. It has already radically changed the lives of hundreds of women, children and elderly.
Loving Humanity
Loving Humanity provides women and girls living in poverty across the world with access to period pads. They focus on access to sanitary products as it is a key lever to keeping girls in education for longer and enabling women to work and participate in daily life with dignity.
The work that Lovong Humanity does comes under the banner of Menstrual Health Management – which encompasses not only lack of access to adequate sanitary products like period pads, but also lack of access to private toilet facilities, hygienic disposal and clean water to ensure women and girls can have their periods without risk of infection or worse, period shaming and sexual abuse.
What Loving Humanity has already Achieved:
Kenya
In May 2019 with in-country partners, we opened our first period pad micro-factory in Kibera, one of Nairobi’s largest slums. Over 1,000 schoolgirls are now receiving pads for free, resulting in less infections, a dramatic drop in school absenteeism and a restoration of their dignity – they no longer have to cut up their mattresses to cope!
We are partnered with WASH Alliance Kenya and supported by the Ministry of Health. Having visited Kibera in September 2019, we realised that to enable in-country partners to open new micro-factories with ease we needed to set up a hub in Nairobi. From this central warehouse we will be able to share learnings and best practice, support each unit with raw materials and spares and have an in-country team ready to assist whenever necessary.
Iraq
In November 2019 we donated a period pad micro-factory and one year’s supply of raw material to Oxfam Iraq. Together we will be setting up a micro-factory in Jeddah 5 camp which is currently home to 5,000 internally displaced people, mostly women and children. There is no distribution of pads.
Funding for this work would enable us to offer the necessary on-going support to Oxfam and ultimately to the Iraqi women as they take ownership of it in early 2021.
Jordan
Our first washable nappy factory opened in December 2016 in Zaatari refugee camp just 5 miles south of the Syrian border. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees told us of the desperate situation of thousands of bedwetting children due to the trauma of war. Coupled with that, neither the disabled nor the elderly were being given nappies.
Having imported all the necessary materials from Turkey, we employed 30 of the most vulnerable women in the camp to teach how to manufacture beautiful washable nappies.
Due to difficulties with distribution, we relocated to the compound of a church in Amman where we now employ 8 Iraqis who fled from ISIS in Mosul. The nappies are distributed to Jordan’s refugee community and others desperately in need, through churches and NGOs and we supply Amman’s Mother Teresa homes.
In 2019 we made and distributed over 4,000 nappies to vulnerable people. We now have the potential to increase our distribution network working with UNICEF, Mercycorps and IOCC and we have the capacity to make and distribute up to 13,000 annually. If we can increase the funding for this work we will be able to increase the number of working days from 2 to 5 and buy the necessary flannel material. This will enable us to help thousands more desperate people.
How you can help:
A percentage of each Myochi Art print will be donated to Loving Humanity. To further support the invaluable work of Loving Humanity you can join ‘The Heat’, become ‘An Angel’, Sponsor a Factory or simply select them as your AmazonSmile Charity. All this can be accessed through the link below.
https://www.lovinghumanity.org.uk/donate