A week gone by extremely fast
Only a week ago, I was finishing packing my bags to leave to Arusha, Tanzania, for a 4 week SAP Social Sabbatical assignment with wildlife conservation non-governmental organization Honeyguide.
Four days ago, we finally got to meet the Honeyguide team and feel the passion and inspiration the entire team devotes to wildlife conservation and the challenge of an ever increasing population that is taking the land that wildlife could roam. The last project added to their portfolio is the inception of a Wildlife Conservation Center in Arusha, where the local community and tourists can learn what the Wildlife Conservation challenge is about, which programs Honeyguide already have in place and which tools are being provided to conservationists.
Our challenge for the coming 4 weeks is to build a marketing and communications plan for the to-be-built Conservation Center that will provide guidance and proof that running such a center will be self-sustaining. During our first drive from the hotel to the Honeyguide office, we stop over at the Arusha Cultural Heritage, which is on the same site where the to-be-built Conservation Center will be.
During our short visit we get a quick intro on the location, where the Conservation Center will go, and we get to meet the inspirer and still driving force behind the Cultural Heritage Arusha. Saif’s passion for art has driven him to invest in buiding a wonderful Art Gallery where local artists and artists from across the African continent are presented to the public. We spend quite some time listening to Saif and what he moved him to built the site as it is already, but more importantly, why he supports adding the Conservation Center to this already nice site.
We continue the ride to the Honeyguide office and soak in the atmosphere of the streets of Arusha, where Mount Meru is ever present. During the ride, Damian continues to feed us with input on his plans with the Conservation Center, his expectation towards us, and we get an introduction to the African Massage. Westerners like myself would label the roads as horrible, while the local population looks at that from the bright side: driving on those bad roads is like getting a massage.
Upon arrival, we immediately dove into more detailed discussions and (at least tried to) document what is expected from us, who we can reach out to for input, which other stakeholders in this project we should meet, by when which topics should be cleared, …
The main challgence for success of the Conservation Center is clear: we need enough tourists to visit it, so we need to get their “share of mind” and slot in their schedules when traveling through Arusha. We get bombarded with a list of tour operators, get nitroduced to the Tourist Operator Association, Tourist Guide Assiciation, … while we try to build a quick survey to deploy and get trustworthy data on tourist itiniraries, length of stay, prime destinations, … At first it looks undoable, but once chuncked up into peices, we believe we can deliver what is expected.
The extreme organizational capabilities shown by a swarm of army ant crossing through the garden area at the Honeyguide offices somehow must have inspired not only us, but are quite examplary for all we’re doing here.
The strong ants on the outside provide a protective barrier for the smaller worker ants and protect the swarm’s future.
